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BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

Published BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



The Pathos of Distance. 12mo. 

(Postage extra) net, $2.00 

Franz Liszt. Illustrated. 12mo, . net, $2.00 

Promenades of an Impressionist. 12mo. 

net, $1.50 

Egoists: A Book of Supermen. 12mo, net, $1.50 

Iconoclasts: A Book of Dramatists. 12mo, 

net, $1.50 

Overtones: A Book of Temperaments. 

12mo net, $1.50 

Mezzotints in Modern Music. 12mo, net, $1-50 

Chopin: The Man and His Music. With 
Portrait. 12mo net, $2.00 

Visionaries. 12mo, . . . net, $1.60 

Melomaniacs. 12mo, . . . net, $1.50 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 



THE 
PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

A BOOK OF 
A THOUSAND AND ONE MOMENTS 



BY 
JAMES HUNEKER 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1913 






COPYRIGHT, 19 13, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNEr's SONS 



Published May, 1913 




)Cl.A;Mi:iV 



^0 

JOHN HOWARD McFADDEN 

A LOVER OF THE TINE ARTS 



" Convictions are prisons . . . The experi- 
ence of seven solitudes . . . New ears for 
new music. New eyes for the most re- 
mote things . . . The pathos of distance." 
—Friedrich Nietzsche. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Magic Lantern 3 

II. The Later George Moore 16 

Memoirs of My Dead Life 26 

The Recrudescence of Evelyn .... 29 

More Memories 36 

III. A Half-Forgotten Romance 49 

A Tragic Comedian 64 

IV. The Real Isolde — Wagner's Autobiog- 

raphy 70 

Wagner's Autobiography 82 

V. Certain American Painters 103 

Whistler 103 

Arthur B. Davies — A Painter- Visionary . 11 1 

VI. Matisse, Picasso, and Others .... 125 

The Matisse Drawings 137 

Pablo Picasso 141 

Ten Years Later 148 

Lithographs of Toulouse-Lautrec . . . 157 

VII. New Promenades of an Impressionist . . 161 

Art in Cologne and Cassel 161 

Art in Frankfort 171 

New York — Cosmopolis 181 

English Masters in the Collection of John 

Howard McFadden 202 

How Widor Played at St. Sulpice . . . 208 
vii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

VIII. The Celtic Awakening 219 

John M. Synge 228 

A Poet of Visions 235 

IX. The Artist and His Wife 245 

X. Browsing among My Books 264 

Gautier the Journahst 264 

Maeterlinck's Macbeth 273 

Pater Reread 279 

A Precursor of Poe 285 

Mme. Daudet's Souvenirs 290 

The De Lenz Beethoven 296 

Ideas and Images 3°3 

The Eternal Philanderer 3" 

The New English Nietzsche 319 

The Last Days of Verlaine 325 

XI. The Pathos of Distance 332 

XII. In Praise of Fireworks 343 

XIII. A Philosophy for Philistines .... 347 

Jacobean Adventures 357 

XIV. The Playboy of Western Philosophy . . 367 

XV. A Belated Preface to Egoists .... 386 



VUl 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

More than a quarter of a century has passed 
since I first entered the Cafe Guerbois, on the 
BatignoUes, where begins the avenue de CHchy. 
A student of music, sans le sou, I lived in a 
httle street that ran off the boulevard des Ba- 
tignoUes, No. 5 rue Puteaux, in a sunless room, 
at the top of a dark, damp building. I studied 
finger-problems on a tuneless upright pianoforte. 
Like the instrument, I was out of tune myself, 
for I was hungry at least eighteen hours of the 
twenty-four. Dining, as I grandly called it, was 
an important event in my day ; a bowl of choco- 
late and a dry roll had to suffice me until the 
evening. Then what joy! soup, succeeded by 
the meat of the same, followed by a salad and 
cheese. The wine cost eight sous a litre; it was 
sharp, thin, and blue: yet it warmed, and when 
one is not twenty, and possesses a ferocious ap- 
petite, coupled with a yearning for the ideal, the 
human machine needs much stoking to keep up 
steam and soul. 

It was not every day I could afford to sit upon 
the terrace of the Cafe Guerbois; there I proudly 
took my coffee and smoked in flush times, after 
my humble dinner lower down the BatignoUes. 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

The place was always crowded, specially Jete- 
days and Sunday nights. I knew by sight the 
celebrities of the new painting crowd (a pupil of 
Bonnat had disdainfully named them for me): 
Manet, Desboutins, the engraver, giant Cladel, 
the novehst, Philippe Burty, Zacharie Astruc, 
poet-sculptor, friend of Baudelaire, and Degas, 
greatest of artist-psychologists. Zola came, too, 
though I never saw him. I had eyes for none 
but Manet, with his fair hair and beard, his rest- 
less gestures, so full of eloquence. He and his 
crowd had been sneeringly christened the Ba- 
tignolles School, and the phrase stuck, much to 
their mingled rage and amusement. 

It was one chilly March night, with occasional 
gusts of rain and wind, that I hugged my dreams 
in the Guerbois. The clicking domino games 
did not disturb me, nor did the high excited ^ 
voices of some painters discussing divided tones ■' '' , 
distract my interior vision. I bought a maza- 
gran of coffee, and I possessed a box of tobacco, 
and I had worked at the piano exactly ten hours 
that day, notwithstanding the icy temperature 
of my miserable attic and the intermittent objec- 
tions of my neighbours, expressed in profane and 
at times wooden terms: bootjacks and sticks 
played a rataplan on my door, but without effect, 
I had mastered a page of Chopin; I was happy; 
I was at the Cafe Guerbois; I was in Paris; I 
was young. And being of a practical tempera- 
ment, I read Browning every morning to pre- 
pare myself for the struggle with the world. 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

The door banged violently, and in an airy blast 
and amid volleys of remonstrance from a dozen 
disturbed groups, there entered a man, who 
hastily advanced to my table, embraced me, drip- 
ping wet as he was, and removing a battered silk 
hat, sat down, crying: 

''Dear young chap, order me a drink, order 
yourself a drink. To-night I possess money. 
Yes, I!" 

Our neighbours hardly glanced at him now; 
the painters did not cease a moment in their 
objurgation of burnt-umber and academic brush- 
work. They knew the poet. So did I; but I 
had never seen him with money before. It was 
a rare event in both our lives. His frock-coat 
was frayed; his shirt was carefully concealed, 
while about his neck there was twisted a silk 
handkerchief. And it was clean. If he did not 
show his cuffs when he folded his arms on the 
table, his hands were those of a poet — long, 
beautifully modelled, and white. Despite his 
poverty, an air of personal purity surrounded 
my friend, with his uncertain, pale-blue eyes of 
a dreamer. What a head he exhibited when the 
damp, shapeless hat was lifted. The brow was 
too wide for its height, but yet a brow of exceed- 
ing power and meaning; it was lined with paral- 
lel wrinkles, and there were deep depressions at 
the temples, which made him appear older than 
he was. He had led such an exhausting mental 
and emotional Hfe that he seemed nearer fifty 
than forty. His eyeballs, swimming in mystic 

5 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

light and prominent, were faded when his brain 
was not excited by some ardent thought, which 
was seldom. He wore a moustache and an 
imperial to conceal the narrowness of his weak 
chin; his jaws sloped abruptly to a point; his 
whole appearance was fantastic, a little sinister, 
and sometimes terrifying. But he was a gentle- 
man. Was he not a lineal descendant of the 
Grand Master of Malta? Was he not the com- 
ing glory of French literature? Tossing his long, 
fair hair from his brow, and looking at me with 
those faded eyes, the expression of which could 
be so sparkling, so satirical, he exclaimed: 

"I am a friend of Richard Wagner's." It was 
as if one should proudly say, "I knew Jupiter 
Tonans." Pride satanic was his foible. 

We drank. I asked him: "Is Wagner agree- 
able in conversation? " 

He shrugged his contempt for my idiotic ques- 
tion. "Mt. Etna, is it agreeable in conversa- 
tion?" 

"There are only romantics and imbeciles," 
was another of his remarks; he had forgotten 
time, and did not realise that we were in the full 
swing of reahsm of plein-air painting. But once 
a poet, always a dreamer; except Victor Hugo, 
who was both poet and business man. 

He asked me if he could visit me and play 
some of his compositions. He had set certain 
verses of Baudelaire's. "Wagner likes it," he 
said with simplicity. I had met him a few 
months before, but I knew him for a man of 
6 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

genius. Genius! Those were the mad days 
when a phrase made one ecstatic, when a word 
became a beckoning star. Genius was a starry 
word. I had talked to Walt Whitman at Cam- 
den in 1877 ; but Walt looked more like a Quaker 
farmer than a genius. Vaguely romantic, I felt 
that genius must be poor, unrecognised, long in 
hair, short as to purse. Even disrepute could 
not destroy my ideal. My French poet was 
naturally neat, charming in his manner, and 
the most wonderful talker in the world. Bar- 
bey d'Aurevilly could discourse with the magic 
tongue of a lost archangel; but Barbey, with all 
his coloured volubiUty, could not improvise for 
you entire stories, books, plays, during an even- 
ing in a hot, crowded, clattering cafe. These 
miracles were nightly performed by my poor 
dear friend. How did he do it? I do not know. 
He was a genius, and Hved somewhere in the 
rue des Martyrs. That he barely managed to 
make ends meet we knew; we also knew that 
he never sold any of his stories or novels or plays. 
True, he seldom wrote them. He only talked 
them, and the prowling animals of Bohemian 
journalism, sniffing the feast of good things, 
would pay for the drinks, and later the poet 
had the pleasure of reading his stolen ideas, in 
a mediocre setting, filKng some cheap journal. 
How he flayed the malefactors. How he re- 
proached them in that passionate, trembling bari- 
tone of his. No matter, he always returned to 
the cafe, drank with the crew, and told other 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

tales that were as haunting. I firmly believe he 
had at last come to tolerate me because I did 
not parody his improvisations. 

This night he was uneasy. He asked me the 
whereabouts of Manet. No, I had not seen him. 
Then he repeated Manet's latest mot: Manet, 
before a picture of Meissonier, the famous 
Charge of the Cuirassiers. 

"Good, very good!" exclaimed the painter of 
Olympe. "All is steel except the breastplates." 
Meissonier was furious when a kind friend re- 
peated this story of the painter, derided then, a 
king among artists to-day. The poet predicted 
this. "Wait," he said — "wait. Richard Wag- 
ner, Manet, the crazy Ibsen, myself — wait. 
Our day is to come." Remember, all this was 
long ago. He was a critic as well as a poet, as 
might be guessed of Baudelaire's cherished 
companion. 

We drank in silence. He rattled coin in his 
pocket, and smiled at me imperiously. "Yes," 
he seemed to say, "my hour of triumph is at 
hand." I asked him questions with my eyes. 
He stretched a friendly hand across the table, 
fairly bursting with pride. 

"Hold, young American! It is true; to-day 
I have sold a play. Here is the earnest money." 
He showed a palm full of gold pieces. Then he 
glanced furtively about him. Not a literary 
buzzard was in the cafe. Some one back of us 
cried the praises of a monster magic-lantern exhi- 
bition that had been given in the Clichy Quarter. 
8 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

I saw that my poet was interested. He turned 
his head, Hstened for a few moments, then he 
scornfully said: 

"They call that a magic lantern ! I saw a magic 
lantern once, and on a scale that would have 
frightened these poor devils." I felt that some- 
thing was coming; but I sat still, knowing the 
slightest interruption might arrest the story. 
He leaned back, put his pipe between his teeth, 
and in the tones of a noctambulist improvised his 
tale. His eyes at times seemed to have a deli- 
cate film over them, yet sufficiently translucent 
to allow a gleam of blue to penetrate the misty 
covering. I trembled. He spoke slowly, — and 
Remy de Gourmont, philosopher and prose- 
master, will bear witness to the outHne of the 
story; once Villiers had sketched it for him: 

"When I was in Africa — don't stare, I've 
been all over the world — I found myself, some 
fifteen years ago, on the border of the Red Sea. 
Though winter by the calendar, it was furnace- 
hot in this gehenna of cactus and sand. I had 
affiliated with a small tribe of Arabs, — I was 
disguised en Arabe, — and we rode all night to 
escape the EngHsh, who were behind us with two 
battalions. El-Ferenghy, our chief, a man of 
profound learning and unheard-of bravery, did 
not act as if discouraged when the scouts he had 
posted at our rear reported that the red-coats 
were not far away. We skirted the sandy shores 
of the horrible sea, and reached finally a vast 
ravine between two gigantic heaps, rather moun- 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

tains, of sand. El-Ferenghy deployed his forces 
into the deepest of the ravines and the most 
inaccessible part of this arid wilderness. It 
looked like the bottom of a sea the water of 
which had vanished after some cataclysm in a 
prehistoric past. We pitched no tents, but 
squatted under the rays of the burning sun and 
waited. My nerves drove me to imprudence. 
I ventured to ask the chief if we were not in a 
trap: our horses' hoofs had left clear traces for 
the enemy; and to give battle against such odds 
would be impossible. He pierced me with his 
magnetic eyes. ^ Frank,'' he proudly said, and 
oh ! the indescribable pride of his voice — ' Frank, 
let us trust to Allah. I have magic, too. Rest.' 
"The sun was still overhead; the earth a 
gigantic reflector; my brains wabbled in my skull 
as if cooking. Suddenly our captain gave orders 
in a harsh voice. The Arabs jumped to their 
feet and, in single file, raced about in circles, 
firing their long, archaic muskets, yelling like 
devils. 'We are lost,' I muttered, for my ear 
had distinguished the sound of answering guns 
from a distance. ' The EngHsh — they must be 
advancing.' Quivering, I awaited the onslaught. 
I saw El-Ferenghy in the background, on a 
hillock, holding a glittering dial full in the 
sunshine. He shifted it at every angle in the 
most incomprehensible manner, his devil's eyes 
puckered with cold mahce. Was it madness? 
Again there was distant firing, and new panto- 
mime on our part. A word from the chief, and 

lO 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

his men dropped in their tracks, crouching earth- 
ward. The rattling of shots ceased. Our men 
dispersed, as the captain hid the dial in his robes, 
and we sat down silently to our evening meal. 

"At moonrise, after we had slept a few hours, 
there was another call to arms, and once more 
the mysterious manoeuvres were repeated. This 
time I could distinctly hear the cries of the Eng- 
lish. They betrayed an accent of surprise — 
shall I say terror? El-Ferenghy manipulated his 
medal of metal, and the firing, screaming, rac- 
ing, and confusion ceased only at the break of 
dawn. We tethered our horses, which in this 
second mock sortie had been driven full speed 
around the sandy, moon-shaped enclosure. At 
noon it was all begun over again. There was 
half-hearted firing from the EngHsh lines. Their 
men no longer cheered. We must have been 
only a few hundred yards from them, for we could 
note certain movements. A despairing silence 
settled on their encampment. During the after- 
noon they neither fired nor answered our unseen 
challenges. What had occurred? I asked the 
chief. This time he smiled indulgently: 

"'To-morrow night,' he whispered — 'to-mor- 
row night they will no longer fight with ghosts, 
but the ghosts will fight them.' I understood. 
I shivered. Unhappy men, what chance had 
they against devils! I am a Frenchman, I am 
not a lover of the EngHsh; but, after all, they 
are of our white race. I pitied them. 

"The chief had spoken the truth: they were 
II 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

fighting ghosts — worse still, shadows from the 
sky; they were warring against the impalpable, 
and at first, flushed by the success of their at- 
tack, by the number of seeming slain that had 
fallen before their volleys, they had dashed upon 
the Arabs only to grasp at — nothing. Even 
our dead had been carried away. This comedy 
of terror had been enacted under the moon, and 
the bewilderment of our foe was supplemented 
by something disquieting. The white soldiers 
refused to fight phantoms. There were devils 
abroad, they asserted. The troops turned sulky, 
and we heard the officers' agitated voices berat- 
ing their cowardice, and urging them to the con- 
flict. Then brandy must have been dealt out; 
during the afternoon of the third day there was 
a determined and vigorous sally, accompanied 
by a frightful fusilade. But to no avail. They 
felt the returning fire of the Arabs, they saw 
them tumble in heaps upon the ground, but when 
they attacked them with their brutal bayonets, 
they prodded only the sand. All this time the 
demon El-Ferenghy, immobile as a statue, con- 
sulted his little helhsh chronometer, while his 
men spun around, shrieked, and shot off their 
pieces into the empty air. It was no longer an 
enigma. I gazed into the sky, knowing that 
there the battle was fiercest waged. 

"The moon sank from sight soon after mid- 
night. A whistle summoned us to action. This 
time it was no mimic war, or cruel hoax. We 
clambered up the sand-dunes and without warn- 

12 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

ing fell upon the English. It was a too easy 
victory. Half of them were bloated corpses; 
hideous exertions under the blaze of the African 
sun had killed them; the others were too weak 
or frightened to resist. We slew them to a man. 
And upon their congested faces, when the sun 
shot its level beams in the morning, the expres- 
sion was one of supreme horror. We rode away 
to the nearest oasis, leaving our enemy with the 
vultures. I refused an English sword offered 
me by El-Ferenghy, for I loathed the man, 
loathed his magic. A week later I escaped. I 
had been told that the motto of his band was 
that of the Ancient of Assassinations: 'All is 
permitted. Nothing is true.' Ah, my friend, 
in the East everything may be expected. There 
the old magic still prevails. There the age of 
miracles has not passed." 

His voice came in whispers. From my cor- 
ner I blinked at him with the eyes of the hypno- 
tised. Yet I was not satisfied. What had really 
happened? What the magic employed? Wliy 
the tactics of the Arabs and the senseless be- 
haviour of the brave British? I stammered: 

"And — wherefore — tell me " 

He smiled, answering: 

"You spoke of magic lanterns. El-Ferenghy 
had a real magic lantern." I betrayed my igno- 
rance of his meaning. 

"Must one, then, explain everything in this 
stupid world, where electricity is performing such 
wonders, where my master Edison " 

13 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

I interrupted his impending rhapsody: 

"Yes, cher maitre, I understand as far as the 
shining dial, but there I stop. Why should the 
English continue firing in the air at nothing? " 

"They did not fire in the air at nothing. They 
fired at living Arabs; they saw them fall; and 
when they attempted to seize them, they had 
disappeared; their dead, too, had disappeared 
with them." 

"I give it up," I sourly repHed; "I never was 
good at riddles." 

"Ha! You give it up, you young materialist 
who will not acknowledge that hfe is a miracle, 
living as we do on a ball of mud and fire balanced 
in space, you give up this story of a magic toy 
— a mere toy, I tell you, in the hands of a man 
who knew more than all our men of science. Yet 
you pretend there is no devil in our universe — 
you, prophet and seer not out of your teens — " 
He paused for want of breath. The cafe was 
quite empty. Soon the lights would be extin- 
guished. 

I grasped my chance: 

"And do you, dear poet, believe in the devil?" 

He crossed himself piously, for he was, even in 
his most blasphemous moods, a sincere Roman 
Catholic. Then, in a hollow voice that froze 
my youthful blood, he quaveringly concluded: 

" El-Ferenghy was not the devil ; but he under- 
stood the mechanism of the mirage. Mirages 
are frequent phenomena in that steaming-hot 
region. He knew how to control the mirage — 

14 



THE MAGIC LANTERN 

that's all. With his round steel mirror, his magic 
lantern, he threw a mirage of his band upon the 
sands, making a false picture, which the English 
mistook for reality. Hence the alarums, the at- 
tacks, the firing, the ghostly pursuits, the sicken- 
ing discouragement, and the cruel denouement. 
Have I made myself clear, jeime fumiste ?" 

"Oh," I cried, "there is but one master of the 
mirage in Paris, and his name, his name " 

The head waiter turned out the hghts, and we 
found ourselves in the avenue de Clichy. He 
bade me a short, disagreeable good-night, and I 
walked in a very depressed humour down the 
Batignolles. It was the last time I ever enjoyed 
the irony, fluted and poignant, of that rare clair- 
voyant soul, Villiers de ITsle Adam. 



IS 



II 

THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 



The time has passed when a novel of Mr. 
George Moore is anathema to the householder 
in Suburbia. Indeed, some Philistines have rec- 
ognised in his work a distinctly moral flavour. 
Such a humanitarian tale as Esther Waters, not- 
withstanding its condemnation by the London 
book stalls, has been acclaimed a victory for law 
and order. To-day many of Mr. Moore's admir- 
ers, possibly the author himself, find the moral 
stress in this book rather too obvious. But to 
the dehght of the unregenerate who love litera- 
ture qua Kterature, Esther Waters was followed 
by CeHbates, the very quintessence of Moore- 
ishness. This volume contained one story that 
would have made the reputation of a half dozen 
"big sellers" among latter-day novelists. I refer 
to Mildred Lawson, of which the late Henry Har- 
land remarked that it was worthy of Flaubert if 
it had been written in good English. The Amer- 
ican novehst was more witty than truthful, for 
Mildred Lawson contains some of Mr. Moore's 
most notable achievements in prose, a fact that 
did not escape the eye of Mr. Harry Thurston 
i6 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Peck, who had the courage to write: "George 
Moore is the greatest hterary artist who has 
struck the chords of Enghsh since the death of 
Thackeray." 

Some one has said that the EngHsh-speaking 
world is divided into three parts — those who 
read Moore and Uke him; those who hate his 
name; those who never heard of him. Certainly 
Moore has had the faculty — or the good luck — 
of bringing foam to critical lips. He is still re- 
garded by many as a rowdy writer. The very 
title of Mike Fletcher evoked a shudder, and I 
may add that I saw Mr. Moore distinctly shud- 
der at Bayreuth when I expressed my admiration 
for that virile story. But it is dangerous to 
indict a man for sins of coarseness as exempli- 
fied in a few of his earlier productions, when 
the body of his later work is of such a high order 
as Moore's. He has always had in him some- 
thing of the gross and mystical. As a critic of 
painting he is one of the five or six in Europe 
whose opinion is worth while. He it was who 
first gave battle in England for the group of 1877, 
the Impressionists, Manet, Degas, Monet, Re- 
noir, Pissaro, Berthe Morisot, Whistler, and the 
rest. He performed the same critical function 
for Verlaine, Rimbaud, Kahn, Jules Laforgue, to 
mention a few of the new men of the early eigh- 
ties. An ardent Wagnerite, he has written by 
all odds, and in any language, the best novel of 
musical people, Evelyn Innes, while naturaUstic 
tales, such as A Mummer's Wife, John Norton, 

17 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

A Modern Lover — this last a study of London 
art life — though often unpleasant, are all very 
powerful. 

Mr. Moore's real debut in English letters caused 
a sensation. The Confessions of a Young Man 
was a book that stirred up the wrath of all pa- 
triotic Britons. It was Gallic, supercilious, mod- 
ern, very iconoclastic; it was not sweet or senti- 
mental; the youthful writer delighted in sweep- 
ing from the shelf of honest British libraries 
whole rows of beloved figures. Even George 
Meredith was not spared, and Thomas Hardy, 
noble master, was rudely jolted by the newly re- 
turned Parisian-Irishman. Naturally there were 
heard the shrieks of the wounded — not, how- 
ever, Meredith's or Hardy's; but complaints 
emanating from soft-hearted folk who disHked 
this ruthless smashing of idols. "You must all 
disappear," cried George Moore; "you are of the 
past, your place is needed by new-comers." And 
he was one of them. Never did the younger 
generation come knocking so rudely at the door. 
Moore was called, inter aha, the Irish Swinburne, 
the Irish Zola, and later, the Irish Huysmans. 
In reality the Confessions betray a greater afiin- 
ity to the early books of Maurice Barres. Both 
men were individuahsts; both beheved they had 
a message. And the Irish writer, when he had 
finished painting the artistic hfe of London dur- 
ing the last two decades of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, went back to his native soil, and this odys- 
sey he soon began to relate to the world. 
i8 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Sociologists say that after forty the "homing" 
instinct shows itself in a man. Whether this 
may be predicated of the man of genius I do not 
know. Mr. Moore was restless for several years 
before he fled the fogs of London, and it seemed 
that Paris should have been his logical stopping- 
place. He preferred Dublin. He was wise 
enough to see that despite the number of books 
written about Ireland there were still several un- 
written. He had mocked his country and its 
religion in previous novels; though A Drama in 
Muslin (published in 1886) proved to be very 
stirring and a veracious picture of the hard times 
during the Land League. But it was not an 
Irishman who wrote the book; Paris and Flau- 
bert, Paris and Zola, Paris and many other de- 
lightful things, were still fermenting in the cere- 
bral cells of the young writer. When, however, 
in 1903 The Un tilled Field appeared, the dis- 
tinctively Celtic note was present. Abundantly 
so. There was superb writing in Evelyn Innes 
and Sister Teresa; and The Un tilled Field showed 
no falhng off in literary quality. Frankly, I am 
not afraid to avow that Flaubert, the Flaubert 
of Trois Contes, would not have been ashamed 
to sign some of its pages. 

II 

The Lake has been widely read and variously 
discussed in Roman Catholic circles, both at 
home and abroad. EngUsh reviewers praised its 

19 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

delicate art and its harmonious descriptions; 
but in London, as in New York, the tale of one 
more recalcitrant priest matters little to those 
outside the fold. The priest in fiction is becom- 
ing a drug, and his only excuse for existence be- 
tween book covers is his flesh and blood qual- 
ities. Is he a viable being? That he can be 
made so is proved by Mr. Moore's hero, and in 
another art, that of the theatre, by Lavedan's 
The Duel. But the Abbe Daniel is a different 
man from Father Oliver Gogarty, parish priest, 
inarticulate poet, and loving idealist. For that 
easily satisfied quantity, the general public, there 
would be no doubt as to the success of Lavedan's 
stage puppet over Moore's religion-weary ecclesi- 
astic. In a word, OHver Gogarty lacks the tang 
of popularity. His name and the colour of his 
soul are against him. 

The priest who allows himself to doubt his 
mission, who rebels mentally before the dogmas 
of his faith, is not so imcommon as one might 
suppose. When he openly challenges the author- 
ity of Mother Church he soon finds his level. 
Like rotten fruit, he drops from the branch of 
the great central tree. PubHcly he is not chal- 
lenged for his disobedience, whatever may be 
the discipHnary precautions and kind advice ten- 
dered him by his bishop or friends. That the 
determining, or rather, let us say, the initial 
cause of his defection may have been a woman's 
love is a fact too frequently observed to be 
doubted. Mr. Moore in one of his early novels 
20 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

said something to this effect, and he has worked 
out just such a problem in The Lake. 

No matter what may be thought of the Irish 
noveUst's attitude toward CathoHcism, it must 
be admitted that in at least one trait of Father 
Gogarty he has sounded a true note. Rather 
than create an open scandal in his parish, the 
priest drops out of sight, letting his death be 
inferred. No absurd pulpit harangues, no defi- 
ance of Pope or bishop, no silly chatter about 
"higher criticism" and recent archaeological 
discoveries whereby Christianity is proved a 
myth, the dream of some Asiatic heresiarch; in 
a word, no ''holding the fort" with the co- 
operation of a sympathetic and misguided con- 
gregation and front-page interviews in the daily 
newspapers. Moore knew his subject too thor- 
oughly to commit such an error. His priest was 
the over-ripe pear which fell on the thither side 
of the walled-in orchard of the faith. This fidel- 
ity to life should make his readers forgive many 
shppery and dangerous spots in the book. 

What is it all about? your friends ask you. 
Nothing much happens. A priest writes letters 
to a woman he hardly knows, falls in love, grad- 
ually loses zeal for his sacred office, and then 
disappears. No thriUing adventures; no senti- 
mental dialogues; no fun; no carnal conflagra- 
tions. Yet slowly, patiently, is evoked for the 
reader the portrait of a real man, a genuine 
woman. You may not care for the calling of the 
one or the temperament of the other. You may 

21 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

ask, as do most of us American grown-up chil- 
dren, why something does not happen. But 
when you have finished you have peeped into 
the souls of a man and a woman and witnessed 
their struggles. What occurs to us in the street 
is not of the same importance as the ideas that 
float at the base of our consciousness. And to 
tell a simple story of simple lives is thrice as 
difficult a task as to relate in huge and resounding 
prose the astonishing happenings in the careers 
of kings and queens, dukes and titled dullards. 

Briefly, this is the slender anecdote from which 
has sprung Mr. Moore's story. OHver Gogarty 
was born in a Httle village somewhere on the 
west coast of Ireland. He had two sisters. 
The family was poor, but it had always boasted 
a priest. The boy was of a mystic mind. He 
fed upon old chronicles, misty legends. He 
loved the lake, the woods, the clouds, the moun- 
tains. Particularly did the early centuries before 
the advent of the hated Sassenach make a potent 
appeal. He wished that he had been born in 
those times when a hermit could spend his days 
praising God and loving the tender flowers and 
the little creatures of the air. A ruined her- 
mitage on a deserted lake island touched his 
imagination. Slowly his sister Eliza instilled 
into his thoughts the idea of priesthood. She was 
determined to be a nun and, as he did not rehsh 
the notion of marrying Annie McGrath and be- 
coming a manufacturer, he ended by being or- 
dained. His parish consisted of simple peasant 

22 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

souls. He had one assistant, Father Moran, a 
priest who battled against the liquor madness. 
One day Father Gogarty heard whispers of a 
scandal about Rose Leicester, a young, good-look- 
ing woman who played the organ in his church. 
She was a girl of unusual mental attainments 
and the priest occasionally rehearsed with her. 

His indignation, then, may be imagined when 
the evil story was brought to him by a gossip- 
ing female parishioner. Rose had a lover. 
Worse still, she could not remain long in the par- 
ish without palpable exposure. Burning with 
rage at the sinner, forgetful of all mercy, the 
priest preached a wrathful sermon one Sunday 
morning, levelling lances at the unfortunate girl, 
though not openly mentioning her name. But 
it sufficed. Next day Rose Leicester disap- 
peared, and for months the rumour persisted that 
she had sought the lake to drown therein her 
shame. Father Gogarty allowed this idea to 
become a fixed one within the walls of his brain. 
Day and night the image of a desperate soul 
drowning herself ravaged his conscience. He 
was of a poetic nature. His imagination played 
him queer pranks, and his life soon became a 
torture. Great was the relief some time after- 
ward to hear from an Irish priest in London that 
Rose had quietly gone away, with her child, and 
was supporting both by her work in London. 

Grateful because of the load lifted from his 
conscience, Gogarty wrote a letter of apology to 
Rose. It was answered. And then began a long 

23 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

correspondence, in wliich we see the growth of 
familiar affection, artistically manipulated by 
the author; the social advancement of Rose, her 
intellectual development, and her artful com- 
munication of these facts to the curious and in- 
terested priest. He is fearful for her soul's sal- 
vation. He is also jealous because of her sur- 
roundings, because of the man — a free-thinker 
— who is giving her so many opportunities for 
culture and travel ; because — and this motive 
appears at the close of the book — the priest falls 
hopelessly in love with the fair letter-writer. 
Not once do we meet her in the story. She re- 
veals herself only in her letters. She writes from 
Holland, from Belgium, from Germany, from 
Italy. She talks of Wagner's music and Rem- 
brandt and Hals, of the River Rhine, of wine, of 
women, of song. Over in Ireland, where the 
upright rain falls, remorselessly, from week's 
end to week's end, the priest, his soul aflame for 
beautiful paintings, music, marbles, cathedrals, 
and palaces, hungrily reads of these lovely and 
desirable things, reads of skies as blue, as hard 
as turquoise. He has an old woman in his cot- 
tage who looks after his humble wants. Occa- 
sionally Father Moran visits him — once to beg 
for whiskey, for he is overtaken by the thirst 
craze at intervals. There are the usual kind- 
hearted peasants, but set before us by a master 
hand. And there is the lake — the symbol of 
the play. 
Bereft even of the letters, for the woman re- 
24 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

venges herself when she has led the priest to an 
avowal by dropping the correspondence, Father 
Gogarty plans an escape. His soul is empty. 
God has withdrawn from him. Worse, far worse 
than the thirst for strong drink which devours 
his fellow-priest is the thirst that makes his pres- 
ent life dry and stale. He resolves to escape. 
But how? He has a sister, now an abbess. He 
will not make her life wretched. He will not pre- 
cipitate a scandal in his flock, perhaps send some 
weak souls to perdition. So he leaves his old 
clothes on the banks of the lake, swims it, and 
with another garb makes his way to Cork and 
to America, where he purposes to become a jour- 
nalist. 

Unhappy man, and in New York ! Far better 
the dreary parish by the lakeside. 

"There is," he reflects on the deck of the 
steamer, "a lake in every man's heart. And 
every man must ungird his loins for the cross- 
ing." Thus the book ends, symbol- wise. 

The Moore people are neither fantastic nor 
anarchs; they are, whether vulgar or visionary, 
fashioned from the common clay of humanity. 
Their author may now say with his own hero: 
"Surely the possession of one's soul is a great 
reality." For those with Irish blood in their 
veins this book is full of that magic we call Celtic. 
It is enchanting, wistful, melancholy, and poetic, 
and across its pages sound the sad undertones 
of a worsted race. It fills one with a veritable 
home-sickness. 

25 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

III 
MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE 

An astoundingly frank book is Moore's Mem- 
oirs of My Dead Life; frank and brutal and 
fascinating. The title is not altogether happy, 
lacking the straightforward ring of his early Con- 
fessions of a Young Man and the excellent sim- 
plicity of that occasional series of literary papers 
he has chosen to call Avowals. But if we cavil 
at the name of the new book there is no mistak- 
ing its quality. Memoirs these pages are, a 
veritable baring of the writer's bosom. In his 
Confessions of a Young Man there are few epi- 
sodes of such intimate human revelation. George 
Moore was too youthful then for profound ex- 
periences ; instead he told us what he thought of 
some modern books and pictures and people. 
In 1877 he had achieved no foregrounds and, as 
Nietzsche might have said, there is pathos in 
perspective whether linear or emotional. 

Not so are the contents of these later Memoirs. 
There is talk about art and literature; but the 
bulk of the volume is given over to the narration 
of various events in the life of Mr. Moore, events 
as a rule pubHshed after a man has joined his 
forefathers across the rim of the unconscious — 
that is, if some indignant and conscientious rela- 
tive does not burn the manuscript. This must 
not be construed that George Moore is a second 
Casanova with his indiscreet outpourings; nor 
26 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

is he as coarse as a comedy of the Restoration. 
Yet, no book has appeared in England since 
Sterne that so plainly deals with matters usually 
left unwritten, if not unsaid. It is one of the 
glories of this Irish author that he is always 
leagues away from hypocrisy. He never calls 
a leg a limb. He is not afraid to remind us that 
the facts of sex, of birth, of death, are gross. 
Nor is he mealy-mouthed and mincing. Pruri- 
ent he is not, though very often coarse, with a 
tang of the eighteenth century. 

It was all very shocking to our American 
fiction-fed pubHc, this outspoken declaration of 
a man who is not afraid to declare that the love 
passion is a blessing, good wine a boon, art alone 
enduring. We heard the moral cackling of the 
hen-minded — forever be praised for that phrase, 
Mr. Howells! — and the wincing of that "re- 
fined" New England school in whose veins 
slowly courses ink and ice-water. To be brief, 
in the EngHsh edition and unexpurgated form. 
Memoirs of My Dead Life is a shocking book, 
and its present reviewer dehghts in the state- 
ment. 

Consummate art is displayed in the handling 
of the narrative, a mingling of artificial simphc- 
ity and the most subtle interbalancing of phrase 
and idea. Some one complained recently that 
in the review of current EngHsh and American 
fiction little or nothing is said of the style or 
scholarship displayed by authors. The reason 
is quite simple. The majority of such books are 
27 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

badly written. As for style, it may go hang. It 
is considered insincere to polish one's periods. 
The quahty that makes Edith Wharton's short 
stories loom above many of her contemporaries 
is a despised quality for those manly practition- 
ers of the art to whom cow-boys and motor-car 
collisions, embalmed poHticians and youthful fe- 
male idiots who play tennis and speak English 
through their nasal ducts, are the choicest pabu- 
lum of fiction. Therefore to write moving Eng- 
Hsh about the human soul has been pronounced 
morbid by prominent critics. 

With Mr. Moore's book little fault may be 
found on the score of individual style and charm. 
He is always charming even in those days of the 
Nouvelle Athenes, when he was so superciHously 
chilly, so arrogant in his assumption of aesthetic 
superiority. It may then be said that the Mem- 
oirs is written in distinguished English, often in 
the key of confidential babbhngs, often rising in 
pitch to the loftier tones of passion and melan- 
choly. There is passion, the Celtic passion which 
exhales from the memories of a man who has 
loved many women, yet who is not cursed with 
the sentimental temperament. It is a burden for 
readers of discrimination when the sentimental 
stop is pulled out in the organ piece of confession. 
George Moore is still pagan enough not to regret 
having lived his life — as the odious phrase goes; 
rather does he seem to regret missed opportuni- 
ties — something that men dare not often avow 
though they may believe it. It is still the same 
28 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

George Moore, artist, poet, egoist, lover; some- 
what softened to be sure — has he not fought 
the fights of Verlaine, Manet, Monet, Degas — 
and George Moore! But across that rather 
cruel, if always poetic, temperament — one may 
not be morally tumefied, yet remain a poet — 
there has descended a rich mist that blurs egotis- 
tical angles, that robs of their harshness several 
episodes which, otherwise, would wear the air of 
vain boastings. Nor has Mr, Moore's uncon- 
scious humour deserted him. He writes mag- 
nificently humorous passages without a spark of 
consciousness as to their destination. If, Uke 
Theophile Gautier's, his periods fall, as do cats, 
on their feet, so do his meanings. But he skirts 
many narrow corners. Precipices yawn at the 
bottom of certain pages. And we often wipe our 
brow in relief as we are helped over some spiny 
fence of dialogue or some terrifying admission. 
He even peeps and botanises on his mother's 
grave. And by the way, he got his title in a 
novel by Goncourt, Charles Demailly by name. 



IV 
THE RECRUDESCENCE OF EVELYN 

Mr. Moore once asked regarding a certain 
writer. What was he the author of? When we 
say Shakespeare, Balzac, Goethe, Wagner, we do 
not think of the titles of their works. But Flau- 
bert we know as the author of Madame Bovary, 
29 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Bizet as the composer of Carmen, or Moreau 
as the artist who gave the world a marvellous 
Salome. Of what is George Moore the author? 
Several critics whose opinions have the ring of 
finality beheve that in painting the portrait of 
the mean-souled Mildred Lawson he created 
a new figure in fiction. What then of Esther 
Waters? It may be suggested that after all 
Esther is the type, a poor, colourless type at that, 
of thousands of unhappy EngHsh servant-girls. 
Nevertheless, it was a feat to set her before us so 
vividly, in a manner that at moments recalls both 
Dickens and Zola. Moore spent his formative 
years in Paris and could not escape the turbid 
surf of the new naturalism. He shows its colour 
and mass in that real story, A Mummer's Wife, 
which contains descriptions of the pottery coun- 
try that Thomas Hardy might have signed, and 
for a heroine — if Kate Ede can be allotted such 
a high-sounding title — a woman who has a Uttle 
of Emma B ovary and something of Zola's Ger- 
vaise in her make-up; the pretty vanity of the 
one and the terrible thirst of the other. A hu- 
man tale, and in spirit not French at all. Dick 
Lenox, "sensual as a mutton-chop," is a character 
absolutely vital and familiar. We have learned 
to hate the phrase "a human document," so 
uncritically abused has it been, yet it suits A 
Mummer's Wife. 

It is said by those who know him that Moore 
is far from pleased when any one talks of his 
early novels. Mike Fletcher he considers a 

30 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

youthful error, though plenty of his admirers see 
it as a big, bold, gross, and unequal book. Mike 
is also a Hving person, not a pale adumbration 
of poUte fiction. That he was both a blackguard 
and poet need not concern us. The amalgam is 
not infrequently encountered. As for Mildred 
Lawson, she is the most selfish girl we ever en- 
countered between book covers; not wicked, but 
temperamentally chilly, and egotist to the bone. 
Even Balzac, Turgenief, and Tolstoy did not an- 
ticipate her. She is as modern as to-morrow, as 
modern as Hedda Gabler. What then shall we 
say is George Moore to be considered the author 
of? If we follow his lead it will be an easy an- 
swer: Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa (they are 
both one story and have been revised and re- 
written several times). Evidently the work is 
its author's favourite, and his devotion in thus 
remoulding what he considered his early faulty 
efforts, while not without a precedent, must have 
been a labour of love. And what a labour. 

The preface to the first edition of Sister 
Teresa (1901) tells of the pubHsher's dismay when 
in 1898 he was shown three hundred thousand 
words, being the adventures of the Wagner singer 
Evelyn Innes. She had made her bow to the 
English reading world that year and was well 
received. But a novel of three hundred thousand 
words was an impossibiUty in our hurried days. 
The story was chopped in the middle, and we 
left Evelyn riding home to London from the 
nuns of the Wimbledon convent. Her mind was 

31 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

made up — she would become a nun. Three 
years later appeared Sister Teresa. As Evelyn 
Innes was overburdened with musical analysis, 
the sequel — rather, the last half — was sat- 
urated with a conventual atmosphere. We all 
wondered how Moore could have caught the 
note so accurately, despite several shocking in- 
cidents, only fit for the Hterature that delights 
in decrying the purity of a nun's Hfe. The 
streak of sensuaHty in the Irish writer may be 
recognised in all of his novels. 

Those who are faithful Moorians thought that 
they had read the end of Evelyn, of Sir Owen 
Asher, of Ulick Dean. It was not to be. The 
artistic conscience of Moore began to ring him 
up at Bayreuth, at Versailles, at Dublin, and 
London. A third edition of Evelyn Innes came 
out in 1901, a sixpenny edition, but its perusal 
soon proved that it contained many new episodes, 
though ninety pages shorter than the original. 
The mystifying love-making between Evelyn 
and Ulick in her dressing-room at Covent Gar- 
den during the third act of Tristan is missing. 
Possibly it was suggested to Moore that Isolde's 
great aria would have been indeed a Liehestod if 
she had attempted to sing on that occasion. 
And Ulick Dean, more Rosicrucian than ever, 
tells of Grania, and Diarmid, Bran, and Cuchu- 
lain in Ireland, at Chapelizod, the spot where 
Isolde walked and talked in actual life with 
Tristan. However, this edition kept fairly close 
to the original scheme. 

32 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Again Moore was haunted by the simulacrum 
of Evelyn. Reproachfully she asked him if he 
had really spilled her soul. For seven years he 
laboured at a complete recasting of her story. 
In 1908 a new Evelyn greeted us, shorn of much 
of her waywardness, a less cold but not a more 
charming woman. Too many overpaintings had 
effaced some original features. We hope she is 
the last incarnation, for though she is not such 
a theologian in petticoats as in her former guises, 
she is not as a character large and generous 
enough to stand another reorchestration. In a 
word, revising does not always mean re-vision. 
Mr. Moore quotes Shakespeare, Balzac, Goethe, 
Wagner, Fitzgerald, George Meredith, and W. B. 
Yeats as precedents in this matter of rewriting an 
early book. But it is hard on the average reader; 
besides, there are some who prefer the confused 
composition and multifarious details of the early 
Evelyn to the clearer-cut profile and swifter-told 
tale of the later version. Why not rake up the 
history of Beethoven's four overtures to his opera 
Fidelio? the Fidelio overture and the three Leo- 
nora overtures? Mr. Moore is still one behind 
in the running with the German composer. 

We are inclined to grumble at the attenuated 
new version of Evelyn's first meeting after her 
elopement with her father. It was a thrilling 
bit of art in the 1898 edition, and the psychol- 
ogy of the singing actress was masterfully ex- 
posed as she sank to her knees asking her simple- 
minded parent for forgiveness. Like Magda's 

33 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

homecoming in Sudermann's play, the comedian 
came to the surface. Evelyn could not forbear 
humming "War es so schmahhch?" the phrase 
Wagner puts in Brunhilde's mouth as she bends 
before Wotan. In the first version Evelyn's 
father, who knows Palestrina better than Wag- 
ner, does not note the mixture of acting and 
genuine emotion. In the new edition he is more 
sophisticated and begs her to stop her foolery — 
which may be natural, but not as effective as 
when he had the innocence of the ear. And 
those who remember Ulick Dean as an Irish 
mystic and music critic may be displeased to 
find another young man who fiddles a little and 
is yet a "smart" business man. Vanished the 
perfumed atmosphere of mysticism and poetry 
and the long rumbling, dehghtful conversations 
about music, art, and literature. The original 
Ulick was possibly a too-well-known portrait of 
Yeats, hence the suppressions. 

But if the new Evelyn Innes may not please, 
there is little doubt that Sister Teresa will not 
fail to win admiration. It is a better-planned 
book and more logical than the first edition, be- 
cause Teresa after four years at the convent 
leaves it knowing that she has not a true voca- 
tion. She pays the debts of the convent, and 
into the world she returns. She devotes herself 
to charity and singing-lessons. The original 
Teresa was pictured as a nun who had lost her 
voice and was quite resigned to her fife, but this 
psychology was weak, at no time did Evelyn 

34 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Innes suggest the possession of a religious na- 
ture. She had a vein of cold sensuality that was 
incompatible with a genuine conversion. She 
always thought of men. Too long before the 
foot-lights she had been to change in a few years. 
Sir Owen, who is the most static character in the 
novel, knew this, and thus the fictive Evelyn 
has asserted her fictive rights and worried her 
creator into changing her destiny. Sister Teresa 
now abounds in brilliant descriptions of desert 
life; Sir Owen goes to the Sahara to see Arabian 
falconry. The painter that is in George Moore 
exercises his art in the most delectable style. At 
the final meeting recorded of Evelyn and Owen, 
they recognise that they are too mature for ro- 
mance; they become good friends. The book 
ends in a suspended cadence, one that leaves 
something for the imagination. You are con- 
scious that the last page overflows into real life 
and does not end abruptly with the covers. 
Evelyn Innes was formerly a novel of musical 
and religious life; it is now a connected love 
story, one that Mr. Moore does not hesitate to 
proclaim as "the first written in English for 
three hundred years." Mr. Moore has never 
valued modesty as one of the fine arts, and he 
gives chapter and verse for his assertion. They 
may not convince readers of Richard Feverel, 
but what cares George Moore — the survivor of 
the Three Georges in English fiction (the other 
two being Meredith and Gissing), the "last of 
the Realists and the first of the Symbolists." 

35 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

V 

MORE MEMORIES 

The memory of George Moore borders on the 
abnormal. Sights, sounds, and scents of child- 
hood are recalled after the lapse of years by the 
majority of persons, but not so easily the events 
of one's middle years. Mr. Moore confesses to 
having been born in 1857; he is therefore over 
the ridge-pole of life. His new book, the first of 
the trilogy Hail and Farewell, which is entitled 
Ave, is a still sharper test of his retentive 
memory than the Memoirs of his dead life or the 
Confessions of his youth, for it deals with occur- 
rences in his life that happened not more than 
fifteen or twenty years ago. Only on the sup- 
position that the author kept a diary can we 
understand his mental drag-net, and Mr. Moore 
does not, we have been told, indulge in the habit. 
That the book has shocked his Irish contempo- 
raries we can readily realise, but it was inevita- 
ble; like Dante he has placed friend and foe alike 
in his pleasant inferno, and doubtless has told 
many truths. Our chief amazement is caused 
by the army of details, the thousands of facts 
which are the bone and sinew of Ave. 

The book is not precisely an autobiography, 
for there is a fictional air about the performance 
which testifies to the most exquisite art; never- 
theless the story deals with the careers of George 
Moore and of his friends, Edward Martyn, author 

36 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

of The Heather Field and other plays; the poet 
W. B. Yeats; Lady Gregory, indeed the entire 
Abbey Theatre group. It begins with Moore's 
introduction to the new movement in Dublin to 
restore the study of Erse, and ends with his de- 
parture from London at the outbreak of the 
Boer war. He was a Little Englander, and it 
may be remembered that he issued a manifesto 
in which he gave his reason for abandoning Eng- 
land to her fate, a proclamation that moved Max 
Beerbohm to a mocking discourse. 

On the first page we find Mr. Moore living in 
a garret — the year 1894, his poverty temporary 
— -in King's Bench Walk, and Edward Martyn 
in another at Pump Court. From him he learned 
of the new literature in Irish and was duly in- 
credulous. "I began to think of the soul which 
Edward Martyn had told me I lost in Paris and 
in London; and if it were true that whoever 
cast off tradition is hke a tree planted in uncon- 
genial soil. Turgenief was of that opinion: 
'Russia can do without any of us, but none of 
us can do without Russia.' True, perhaps, of 
Russia, but not true of Ireland. Far more true 
would it be to say that an Irishman must fly 
from Ireland if he would be himself. English- 
men, Scotchmen, Jews, do well in Ireland — 
Irishmen never; even the patriot must leave Ire- 
land to get a hearing." And later he declares with 
true Mora\dan logic that "a Protestant can never 
know Ireland intimately." This, coming from 
this Celtic St. George, stirred Ulster to its centre. 

37 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

The interest and value of the book do not con- 
sist in its fable, but in its art. Mr. Moore goes 
to Dublin, raises ructions, falls out with his 
friends, falls in again; goes to Bayreuth, makes 
remarks about the absence of decent plumbing, 
returns to London, and again raises a row. He 
is a living embodiment, or rather the literary 
equivalent, of "tread on the tail of me coat." 
But if any one repeats the hoary falsehood 
that George Moore lacks the sense of humour 
his Ave will be the best answer. It is full 
of implicit humour, naive, subtle, never ex- 
uberant. 

He met Cosima Wagner at Bayreuth in 1897. 
''Liszt lives again in her, the same inveigling 
manner; she casts her spells like her father. 
But how is all this to end? Am I going to run 
away with her?" We submit that as a truly 
humorous outbreak. And his portrait of Sieg- 
fried Wagner: "The son is the father in every- 
thing except his genius; the same large head, 
the same brow, the same chin and jaw. 'A sort 
of deserted shrine,' I cried to myself, and gasped 
for words." The late Anton Seidl is as happily 
described. He conducted Parsifal in Bayreuth 
that year. The search for chambers in the stuffy 
little town is the real Moore. There is much 
criticism of Wagner and Wagner singers scat- 
tered through this section of the book, some of 
which may make the reader stare. 

The Dublin experiences ought to prove fas- 
cinating to the leaders of the Celtic renaissance. 

38 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Lady Gregory is sketched at full length and with 
surprising amiability considering the tart tongue 
of the writer, who did not spare his mother in 
his earlier memoirs. Speaking of her literary in- 
terest in Yeats he says: "As the moon is more 
interested in the earth than in any other thing, 
there is always some woman more interested in a 
man's mind than in anything else, and is willing 
to follow it sentence by sentence. A great deal 
of Yeats's work must come to her in fragments 
— a line and a half, two lines — and these she 
faithfully copies on her type-writer, and even 
those that his ultimate taste has rejected are 
treasured up and perhaps one day will appear 
in a stately variorum edition." Mr. Moore de- 
scribes her as he first saw her some twenty-five 
years ago: "She was then a young woman, very 
earnest, who divided her hair in the middle and 
wore it smooth on either side of a broad and 
handsome brow. ... In her drawing-room were 
to be met men of assured reputation and politics, 
and there was always the best reading of the time 
upon her tables. There was nothing, however, 
in her conversation to suggest literary faculty. 
Some years after she edited her husband's mem- 
oirs, and did the work well, . . . and thinking 
how happy their [Yeats's and Lady Gregory's] 
life must be at Coole, my heart went out to her 
in sudden sympathy. I said she knew him to be 
her need at once, and she never hesitated . . . 
yet she knew me before she knew him." Per- 
haps this may account for the slightly curdled 

39 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

milk in the cocoa-nut. Otherwise Lady Gregory- 
is a charming lady and the very pattern of a 
doting grandmother. 

Again, the value of the portraiture in Ave de- 
pends less on its fidelity to the unconscious and 
presumably unwilling sitters and more upon the 
wonderful art displayed. Occasionally the firm, 
nervously incisive line of the writer flattens and 
falters into caricature, but not often. That 
dinner at which Moore met certain Dublin ce- 
lebrities is one of the best chapters in his mem- 
oirs. There were Gill with his beard, Tom the 
Trimmer, and RoUeston, with too little back to 
his head; John O'Leary, the ancient beard; 
Standish O' Grady, whose talent reminded one of 
the shaft of a beautiful column rising from amid 
rubble heaps. "0' Grady tells me that he found 
Rolleston a West Briton, but after a few lessons 
in Irish history Rolleston donned a long black 
cloak and a slouch hat and attended meetings, 
speaking in favour of secret societies," and alto- 
gether scaring O' Grady by his impetuousness. 
Moore murmured to himself: "What a good 
tutor he would make if I had children." And 
the professor! What a joy he must experience 
as he gazes upon his portrait as here limned by 
Moore. Is it Dowden or Mahaffy? Impossible ! 
Certainly a literary somebody. He abhors their 
wine, but likes Marsala. His appetite is fair. 
He says to the waiter: "Nothing much to-day, 
John. Just a dozen of oysters and a few cutlets 
and a quart of that excellent ale." And says the 
40 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

professor: "After that I had nothing at all until 
something brought me to the cupboard, and 
there, behold! I found a bottle of lager. I said 
* Smith has been remiss. He has mixed the Bass 
and the lager.' But no. They were all full, 
twelve bottles of Bass and only one of lager. 
So I took it, as it seemed a stray and lonely 
thing." George Moore not charitable not hu- 
morous? Eh? 

Yeats, who sat with "his head drooping on 
his shirt-front like a crane," was there, and there 
was a letter read from W. E. H. Lecky. Horace 
Plunket was alluded to; but when Moore was 
called on for a speech he answered: "No, no! 
I will not. My one claim to originality among 
Irishmen is that I never made a speech." Then 
Hyde was called upon, Douglas Hyde. "A shape 
strangely opposite to Rolleston, who has very 
little back to his head. All Hyde's head seemed 
at the back, like a walrus, and the drooping 
black moustache seemed to bear out the like- 
ness. . . . Without doubt an aboriginal." But 
he grew to admire Hyde. Of "A. E.," the poet- 
painter (George Russell), Moore said: "Here is 
the mind of Corot in verse and prose." John 
EgUngton reminded him of both Emerson and 
Thoreau, — a Thoreau of the suburbs. "The 
hard north is better than the soft, peaty Cath- 
olic stuff which comes from Connaught," adds 
the author. Moore never fails to strike out 
sweet sounds for his one-time co-religionists. 
His name in Ireland nowadays is responsible 

41 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

for much mild objurgation, for he is in a man- 
ner the playboy of the "far-down" world. 

There are no sentimental episodes in Ave, 
but too many long-drawn-out discussions about 
the making of plays. Edward Martyn seems to 
Mr. Moore singularly obstinate, for he refuses 
to alter his play and is well abused for his stub- 
bornness. Mr. Yeats comes in for his share of 
criticism. There are so many felicitous pages of 
musical English, English that expands before the 
eye into sudden little sceneries: Ireland the land 
of beauty, Ireland misty and melancholy, that 
we forgive the gall for the honey. Like most 
Irishmen George Moore is lyric only in the pres- 
ence of nature; for his fellow-countrymen he 
reserves his irony. 

The fact is that Moore is an aesthetic fire- 
brand. He is always applying his torch to some 
reverent institution, to some hay-mow of preju- 
dice. He has reviled British painting and novel- 
writing. He has called by hard names persons 
in popular favour. When he announced that he 
would shake the dust of London from his shoes 
there were thanksgivings offered up in some Eng- 
lish newspapers. 

And yet a milder-mannered man never scut- 
tled the ship of conventionality than this same 
George Moore. I last saw him on the esplanade 
in front of the Wagner Theatre at Bayreuth. 
We talked during the long entr'actes about mu- 
sic, literature, the Erse language, and America. 
Every attempt I made to trip him into a dis- 
42 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

cussion of his own novels met with a gentle but 
unmistakable rebuff. He shivered when I spoke 
of his earher stories of A Modern Lover, Spring 
Days, and Mike Fletcher, that very remark- 
able trilogy of London life (and to-day they are 
reprinted in a new edition). But he said many 
things on other themes. 

"You Americans are always on the right side 
in a struggling cause. You freed Cuba, and even 
if you do gain a material profit the end justifies 
the means. You did right." 

"I don't believe in books," apropos of Flau- 
bert. "We all read too much. It is better to 
sit on a fence in the sunshine and look at things 
than to bury one's head in a book. If you read 
a half-dozen books in a lifetime, read and re-read 
them, you have conquered all bookish wisdom." 

Shakespeare's, Balzac's, Turgenief 's, Tolstoy's, 
and Flaubert's names were mentioned as a com- 
prehensive list. " No one can hope to equal such 
writing as Flaubert's. Why attempt it? We are 
all imitators." Naturally, as Mr. Moore has 
read all the books and written a lot, he has his 
doubting moods. 

"The theatre is the only field for the twentieth- 
century artist. By placing before the eyes and 
ears of the people your story you gain an im- 
measurable advantage over the written word. 
The spoken word — always. Consider the power 
of Wagner! His is the real art of the new cen- 
tury — speech reinforced by tone, and such 
tone!" 

43 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

After hearing Sir Edward Elgar's Dream of 
Gerontius in London he was asked his opinion 
of the music. *'Holy water in a German beer 
barrel," was his wicked if not altogether con- 
vincing reply. 

Mr. Moore read in a newspaper this sentence : 
"We often speak of the trouble that servants 
give us, but do we ever think of the trouble that 
we give servants? " This was illuminating. "Of 
course we give servants a great deal of trouble." 
And then he began to consider the vicissitudes 
in the life, say of a cook-maid. The poor wretch 
earns from fourteen to sixteen pounds a year. 
She may get into trouble. There is another life 
to be looked after. How can she support herself 
and a child on such a meagre sum? All the hor- 
rors of baby-farming^ were set forth in Esther 
Waters with such clearness that the EngHsh 
nation was revolted. George Moore came in for 
his share of opprobrium, but he stood to his 
thesis. He was right, and the public reaUsed 
that he spoke the truth. 

From an equally slight beginning grew the 
novel of Evelyn Innes. A French actress weary 
of her life went into a convent to escape the men 
who trailed after her. She found the nuns too 
childish — which was natural in a sophisticated 
creature of the stage. Evelyn Innes stays and 
becomes a nun in earnest. She loses her voice, 
but not her faith. 

To show you how popular Mr. Moore must be 
let me quote a few of his ideas on various sub- 

44 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

Jects. He declared that "morals are like the 
veering wind, but beauty is a fixed star." "We 
should beware of whatever we write in a book, 
for what we write will happen to us." (Not 
a consoHng thought for penmen.) His opinion 
of women in art has endeared him to the sex 
wherever English is spoken. This opinion ac- 
counts possibly for the expressions of velvety 
wrath his books arouse from women in this land 
of "lady novelists." 

"They [women] are very unlike meti. . . . 
The male animal seems to us more beautiful than 
the female in every kind but our own. We have 
doubted the beauty of women very little. De 
Musset said that most of woman's beauty ex- 
isted in man's love for her. . . . Our concern is 
with the mental rather than the physical woman, 
but mentality is dependent on physical struc- 
ture. Woman is beautiful in detail and she ex- 
cels in detail, but she never attains synthesis, for 
she herself is not synthesis. Every generation 
pours thousands of women into the art schools, 
and after a few years they marry and art is for- 
gotten. . . . Women Hke art until the more seri- 
ous concerns of life begin for them, and George 
Eliot, who had no children, continued to stir a 
sticky porridge all her life long, a substance com- 
pounded of rationalism and morality without 
God. . . . Women have succeeded as actresses 
and courtesans — yes, and as saints; best of all 
as saints; they have worshipped worthily the 
gods that men have created." 

45 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

He pays his respects to Jane Austen, with her 
"wool-work style." 

He agrees with Dvorak, that since "the Indian 
is gone America must look to the negro, for only 
a primitive people can produce language." I 
wonder if the Irish writer ever heard Dvorak's 
so-called American symphony, which sounds so 
Slavic and is so full of quotations from Schubert 
and Wagner. Mr. Moore makes sport of Eng- 
lish painting, and one of his most fantastic ideas 
was that a writer's name may have determined 
his talent. 

"Dickens — a mean name, a name without 
atmosphere, a black out-of-elbows, backstairs 
name, a name good enough for loud comedy and 
louder pathos. John Milton — a splendid name 
for a Puritan poet. Algernon Charles Swinburne 
— only a name for a reed through which every 
wind blows music." Shelley and Byron's poetry 
is like their beautiful names. "Now, it is a 
fact," he continues, "that we find no fine names 
among novelists. We find only colourless names, 
dry-as-dust names, or vulgar names, round names 
like pot-hats, those names like mackintoshes, 
names that are squashy as goloshes. We have 
charged Scott with a lack of personal passion, 
but could personal passion dwell in such a jog- 
trot name — a round-faced name, a snub-nosed, 
spectacled, pot-bellied name, a placid, benefi- 
cent, worthy old bachelor name, a name that 
evokes all conventional ideas and formulas, a 
Grub Street name, a nerveless name, an arm- 
46 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

chair name, an old oak and Abbotsford name? 
And Thackeray's name is a poor one — the syl- 
lables clatter hke plates. 'We shall want the 
carriage at half-past two, Thackeray.' Dickens 
is surely a name for a page boy. George EHot's 
real name, Marian Evans, is a chaw-bacon, 
thick-loined name." 

Moore speaks of Tolstoy as ''a sort of Jules 
Verne in morals." Kiphng is a cinematograph 
(his soul was like a music hall to Arthur Symons). 
*'Real, solid EngUsh novels are composed to pre- 
scription — so much curate, so much Bible, so 
much rehgious doubt, so much setthng down, 
so much money. We hate those novels as we 
hate an EngUsh lunch. Indeed, they are very 
like an EngUsh lunch — the father and the 
mother at the ends of the table, the children and 
their governess at the sides, and the governess 
telUng a child she must not take the rhubarb 
pie in her lap." 

A man whose eye was educated by Corot — 
didn't Corot paint a Lake in the Louvre? — 
whose brain has fed on Turgenief and Flaubert, 
cannot be expected to admire the painted anec- 
dotes of modern British schools or the clumsy, 
formless novels of dear old England. So Mr. 
Moore has sown a goodly crop of enemies by his 
outspoken criticism. If he doesn't Uke a thing 
he sounds his disUke to the four quarters of 
heaven. And the wind thus bred of his fierce 
discourse often returns in the guise of a critical 
typhoon. 

47 



THE LATER GEORGE MOORE 

He has been misrepresented — nay libelled — 
by his pictures. William Orpen has painted him 
as he looked when I saw him at Bayreuth — tall, 
slender, with sloping shoulders, a lemon blond, 
with gray about the temples. His eyes are pale 
blue, the shape of his head oval. He dresses with 
rare taste. His gaze is vague unless he is in- 
terested, and the easiest way to interest him is 
to contradict any one of his pet theories. Dis- 
illusioned, incurious, a quiet-spoken, charming 
gentleman, he has at a moment's notice a large 
amount of nervous energy. Theodore Duret de- 
clares that he once looked like the famous Manet 
portrait, a pastel, with the anarchistic beard. 
Rothenstein's sketch is not too flattering. The 
three pictures presented above may enable you 
to form a fair average of the Irish iconoclast, the 
man who is ever on the side of humanity, right 
or wrong; the writer of exquisitely modulated 
prose, the pantheist, who has said "that life 
is an end in itself, and the object of art is to 
help us to live." 

In Salve, the second volume of his projected 
Trilogy, he paints a complete portrait of George 
Russell, poet and painter, though the work lacks 
the variety of its predecessor. I suppose when 
the final book appears it means that George 
Moore has put up the shutters of his soul, not 
to say his shop. But I have my serious doubts. 



48 



Ill 

A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 



About thirty years ago there was a small 
family hotel at the northeast corner of Irving 
Place and Seventeenth Street; kept by an elderly 
German married couple, the place was noted 
for its excellent cooking, its home-like atmos- 
phere. Many well-known Americans and Ger- 
mans in literary and artistic life made a rendez- 
vous at Werle's, and at the table d'hote dinner 
you could always count on meeting entertaining 
companions. It was one of those houses where 
at any time before midnight the sounds of piano- 
fortes, vioHns, violoncellos, even the elegiac flute, 
might be heard and, invariably, played by skilled 
professional hands. There was, I recall, a small 
vine-covered entrance, on the steps of which we 
sat hstening to some passionately played Chopin 
Ballade, or to string music made by Victor Her- 
bert and his friends across the street. 

For several weeks I had been a frequenter of 
the place, when the mistress of the establishment 
told me that the Red Countess would be at one 
of the dinner- tables. Later I saw sitting near 
the centre of the dining-room, which was in the 

49 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

basement, a large, rather heavy woman, with 
red hair of the rich hue called Titian by aesthetic 
hair-dressers and ardent reporters. Her face was 
too fleshy for beauty, but the brows and the in- 
tense expression of the eyes made up for any 
lineal deficiency. She must have been in the 
forties, and the contours of her finely moulded 
head, her aristocratic bearing and the air of one 
accustomed to command attracted my attention. 
This lady spoke four or five languages and was 
the very hub of the company. Finally, after 
watching her and Hstening to her very musical 
voice, often disturbed by ironic intonations, I 
asked a friend her name. 

" The Red Countess, otherwise the Golden 
Serpent, otherwise Countess Shevitch, other- 
wise the Princess Racowitza, otherwise Helena 
von " 

"Stop!" I exclaimed. *'Is this the heroine 
of Meredith's novel. The Tragic Comedians?" 

*'The same," was the answer; my companion 
read English, even the English of Meredith, an 
unusual feat for a German three decades ago. 
The moment was hardly historic for me, but it 
sent me back to Meredith and to his exasperat- 
ingly clever story. After the tragic death of 
Ferdinand Lassalle, Helena von Doenniges mar- 
ried Prince Yanko Racowitza, and some time 
after his death the widow married a Russian of 
birth, Count Shevitch, a political agitator, and 
with him came to New York. The Russian 
Government had expropriated the estate of her 

50 



A HALF- FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

husband, and as they were active nihilists, or 
anarchists, or any one of the names invented for 
the public so as to discredit the war for liberty, 
the Shevitches had to make their hving, the Count 
in journaHsm, for the propaganda, the Countess 
as a writer. I barely recall a volume of short 
stories signed with her name, the theme of which 
was devoted to proletarian Hfe on the East Side, 
a theme that is thrice familiar now, but in those 
days had the merits of novelty. (Gorky has 
since taught us how the submerged tenth lives 
and rots and dies.) Soon after I encountered her, 
the Countess Shevitch with her husband re- 
turned to Europe, and the pair settled in Mu- 
nich, where their home was a magnet for the lit- 
erary, musical, and artistic elements of that 
delightful city on the green river Isar. 

If you have read Meredith's vivid but one- 
sided book you will not need to be told that its 
Tragic Comedians, Clotilde von Riidiger and 
Sigismund Alvan, are masks for the high-born 
Helena von Doenniges, daughter of General von 
Doenniges, Bavarian ambassador to Switzerland 
— it was before the consolidation of the German 
Empire — and the celebrated agitator, brilliant 
writer, so-called father of German sociahsm, 
Ferdinand Lassalle. Meredith told the story 
in his own crackling, incendiary style, after 
the appearance of Helena's book — veritable 
confessions of her relations with Lassalle. She 
was a Christian, educated in a Hebrew-hating 
house (though it was whispered that on her 

51 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

maternal side a trace of Oriental blood was not 
to be denied), and Lassalle was the fine flower 
of the Jewish- German; a thinker, a born leader, 
and one of the handsomest men of his day in the 
Oriental style, the style of which Meredith writes : 
"The noble Jew is grave in age, but in his youth 
he is the arrow to the bow of his fiery eastern 
blood, and in his manhood he is ... a figure of 
easy and superb preponderance, whose fire has 
mounted to inspirit and be tempered by the in- 
tellect." It was the love romance, now a half- 
forgotten one, that set all Europe gossiping, won- 
dering and, finally, sent it into semi-hysterics, 
as the affair turned into a tragedy, for which the 
woman was universally condemned. 

The main events in this lamentable case are 
not so simple as they appeared in the published 
reports of the time, 1864; nor as distorted as 
they stand in Meredith's account. It must be 
kept in view that the chief cause of the Von 
Doenniges' contempt for Lassalle was not alone 
because of his Jewish ancestry — he was known 
to be a free-thinker; nor was his connection with 
the German-Democratic party an absolute bar 
to his hopes of an alHance with Helena — was 
not Lassalle on intimate terms with Bismarck? 
Had not Bismarck jokingly remarked that if 
Lassalle seriously entered the poHtical arena, he, 
Bismarck, would put up the shutters of his shop? 
(There was a grim nuance to this joke, as some 
remember Bismarck's curious behaviour at the 
news of Lassalle's sudden death.) Did not Las- 

52 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

salle persuade Bismarck not to impose a property 
qualification for the electoral franchise in the 
Reichstag? No, Lassalle was far from being a 
negligible suitor; his father was rich, he had been 
given a liberal education, he was considered one 
of the most learned jurists and brilliant pleaders 
at the contemporary bar, the one hope of the 
social democracy — why should the Von Doen- 
niges have objected to such a union? They 
occupied the best of social positions in Munich, 
though they were not very wealthy. Helena 
had in her own right seventy thousand thalers. 
But her parents were narrow, prejudiced, with 
old-fashioned notions about manners and mor- 
als. They were strict Protestants. And it is 
here the shoe pinched. Ferdinand Lassalle was 
considered one of the most dissolute men in 
Germany. That he found time to gamble, 
drink, and pursue the never-too-elusive siren 
and also work fifteen hours a day, like the intel- 
lectual giant he was, must be set down to the 
prevalence of the legendary in the lives of public 
men. If Liszt had led the existence with which 
he was accredited he would not have composed 
all the music he did; not to speak of his piano- 
forte performances. It may be said without fur- 
ther discussion that Lassalle was neither a great 
saint nor a prodigious sinner. And being fluent 
of tongue, always on view, and the participator 
in a half-dozen scandals, he was credited by his 
enemies — and he had, luckily for him, a legion 
— with leading a loose life. Which was mani- 

53 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

festly impossible. Yet the Von Doenniges were 
only too glad to believe the talk, and as there was 
one ugly spot in Lassalle's career, they invariably 
pointed it out to the exclusion of his indisputable 
record for accomplishing remarkable things. A 
reckless man in speech and bearing, Lassalle was 
named by some of his co-religionists. Chutzpe, 
i. e., a daring, impertinent fellow. 

He was born at Breslau, April ii, 1825. After 
a stormy youth he entered the legal profession 
and astonished every one by his knowledge of 
Roman law and Hegelian philosophy. Heracli- 
tus the Dark was the thesis of one of his books; 
Franz von Sickingen the name of his only drama. 
He became a fighting socialist, absorbing, it is 
asserted, most of his socialistic learning from 
Karl Marx and Ricardo. He was called "The 
Social Luther," and though opposed to duelling 
— he refused many challenges ^— he was a dead 
shot and a dangerous swordsman. Lassalle was 
the first president of the General Workingman's 
Club. His fighting motto was: "State support 
for co-operative production." He was not in 
sympathy with "passive resistance" as a weapon 
against the government. A fallacy, he cried: 
"Passive resistance is the resistance which does 
not resist." It might be easy to maintain that 
Lassalle, if he had lived and not married into 
the philistine Munich family, might have drifted 
into the ranks of the militant anarchists. That 
he would have broken with Marx is almost a cer- 
tainty. The blood ran too hotly in his veins to 

54 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

long endure the opportunism of his cooler- 
headed colleague. Possibly Bakounine — Rich- 
ard Wagner's associate in the Dresden insurrec- 
tion of 1849 — would have charmed the younger 
man; there were seventy thousand Bakounistes 
in Spain alone in 1873. And would Lassalle have 
espoused Marx's side in the polemical duel at 
Geneva between Bakounine and Marx, Marx, 
who had contemptuously called Proudhon's 
philosophy of want, "a want of philosophy"? 
Germany has never been the home of anarchy; 
socialism has always outnumbered its adherents. 
Marx, with his international-social democracy, 
was pinching Lassalle's national ideal, and though 
Bismarck was flattering the youthful agitator 
by adopting some of his ideas, Lassalle was in 
reality dissatisfied. Either Bakounine or Prince 
Krapotkin might have won him over. But his 
ambition was insatiable. He did not believe in 
a divided throne. He was romantic, and roman- 
ticism is one parent of philosophic anarchism, 
though Flaubert wittily called the god of the 
Romanticists "an upholsterer." But Russian 
revolutionists had not made their appearance on 
the map of European unrest before Lassalle died. 
He was a powerfully built man, five feet six 
inches in height, with a broad, deep chest. 
Brown-haired and blue-eyed, he was vain of his 
appearance, dressing in dandy fashion and al- 
ways carrying the gold-headed cane of Robes- 
pierre, which was presented to him by the novel- 
ist Forster; temperamentally, Lassalle recalled 

55 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

Mirabeau. In 1841 Heinrich Heine met him in 
Paris and admired him exceedingly. He said of 
him: "Ferdinand Lassalle is a young man of the 
most distinguished gifts of mind; with the pro- 
foundest learning, the widest knowledge, the 
greatest acuteness — uniting the ardent gifts 
of exposition and energy of will to a decisiveness 
in action which is astounding." He further- 
more addressed him as "the son of the new 
Time." To the gaze of the sick poet, Lassalle 
was the one man destined to lead his beloved peo- 
ple forth from the wilderness to the promised 
land; — "people" in Heine's sense, being all the 
poor and oppressed of this world, not merely his 
tribal forebears. Unhappily, Lassalle failed to re- 
aUse the golden dreams of the German prophet. 
A few years later he became immersed in the 
legal affairs of Countess Hatzfeldt, who, desir- 
ing to sever her marriage with a gay husband, 
employed the young lawyer with the eloquent 
tongue. If Helena von Doenniges was his fate, 
so was this Hatzfeldt woman, who stood by him 
in all his troubles, always playing the friend — 
some deny she was anything else — and giving 
him an annuity of seven thousand thalers for 
winning the case against her husband, that gave 
her a share in large landed estates. But there 
was a disagreeable occurrence during the prog- 
ress of the trial. Count Hatzfeldt presented a 
certain feminine acquaintance of his with an 
annuity bond of one thousand pounds value. 
Lassalle, they say, instigated the pursuit of both 

56 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

bond and lady and secured the former for the 
Countess. His companions in the undertaking 
were arrested, indicted, condemned to prison. 
Ferdinand escaped only after a trial in Cologne, 
in 1848, and because of his irresistible address in 
the court-room. Nevertheless the story of the 
stolen casette stuck to him, and coupled with the 
fact that he had been imprisoned six months for 
participation in the socialist riots at Dussel- 
dorf in 1846, his reputation was too much for the 
Von Doenniges. Wagner disliked him ; some say 
he was jealous of his personal success. Von 
Biilow, the pianoforte virtuoso, admired him, 
though Lassalle offended him when he declared 
that Cosima von Biilow was a blue-stocking. 
"Citizen of the world," as he deHghted to call 
himself, Lassalle was at the height of his powers, 
intellectual and physical, when he was intro- 
duced to Helena von Doenniges. 

This must have been some time in January, 
1862. They had heard of each other from mutual 
friends: he of her beauty, she of his brilhancy 
and witty insolence. She was very beautiful; a 
gold-crested serpent and golden fox, Lassalle had 
christened her, A glance at her portrait painted 
by Von Lenbach shows us a girl of the Mrs. 
Scott-Siddons type; poetic, emotional, impul- 
sive, weak — very weak — as to will, altogether 
a young woman spoiled by a doting grandmother, 
a schwdrmer, and of a rebellious, warm-blooded 
temperament. Just because Lassalle was abused 
at home for a Jew, a demagogue, and a man who 

57 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

was said to live on the bounty of a titled woman 
— the latter was a false assertion — just be- 
cause of these wellnigh inscrutable barriers, the 
capricious young person fell in love with him; 
while he, desirous of setthng in Hfe and not 
blandly indifferent to the social flesh-pots of the 
proud Munich family, assumed the attitude of 
the accepted conqueror. Meredith gives an 
electric presentment of the first meeting; but 
for a more sober, more truthful rendering of the 
same incident, it is better to go to Helena von 
Doenniges-Shevitch herself. She pubHshed in 
Breslau, 1879, a little volume entitled Meine 
Beziehungen zu Ferdinand Lassalle (My Rela- 
tions with Ferdinand Lassalle). It is said that 
when a woman writes her confession she is never 
further from the truth. Heine once made a 
wicked jest about women who write with one 
eye on the paper, the other on a man; adding 
that the Countess Hahn-Hahn must alone be ex- 
cepted because she was one-eyed. There are 
many lacunce in this confession of an unhappy 
woman, yet the impression of sincerity is unmis- 
takable; too much so for Meredith, who was 
in search of a human document over which he 
could play his staccato wit and the sheet- 
lightnings of his irony. 

We learn from Helena that she was no novice 
at flirtation and that, like many girls of high 
spirit, she refused to be auctioned off to the high- 
est bidder by her worldly parents. She resolved 
to marry Lassalle. There were cries of indigna- 

58 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

tion. She was sent to Switzerland, but at the 
Righi she contrived to meet Lassalle. Contem- 
poraneous with her passion for him, she per- 
mitted the amiable attentions of a young Wal- 
lachian prince. Von Racowitza, a Danube osier 
with Indian-idol eyes, as Meredith calls him. 
This prince, affectionate, good-hearted, rich, 
was the choice of Helena's parents. She told him 
that she loved Lassalle and that she intended to 
marry him. The prince concurred in her plans. 
He was a nice youth and as pUant as a reed. 
Finally, at Geneva, in the summer of 1864, see- 
ing that she would be sequestrated by her father, 
she left liis roof and went to Lassalle's hotel, 
accompanied by her faithful servant, Marie- 
Therese — a venal wretch, as she found out 
later. 

Then Lassalle assumed his most operatic at- 
titude. Elopement? Never! Either you come 
to me, a gift from your father's hands — ! You 
may guess the pose of the fiery orator. Be- 
wildered, the girl could not understand that the 
man feared the loss of poUtical prestige if he 
carried off the daughter of a prominent govern- 
ment official. So he procrastinated — those 
whom the gods hate they make put off the 
things of to-day until to-morrow. Proudly — Las- 
salle's pride was veritably satanic — he returned 
Helena to a family friend — she refused to go 
home — and her parents were summoned. There 
was a painful interview between the mother and 
Lassalle — Helena in the background — one that 

59 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

would make a magnificent fourth act for an am- 
bitious dramatist. Meredith puts epigrams in 
the mouths of these disturbed people that are so 
much sawdust — do not all his people talk as 
brilliantly and as inhumanly, from Father Fev- 
erel to the comedians of the Amazing Marriage? 
This page is a darker one in the Confessions. 
The angry mother used outrageous language; 
Lassalle kept his temper and went away de- 
cidedly the hero of the occasion. Alas! he also 
left Helena to the tender mercies of two enraged 
parents. The General entered cursing and actu- 
ally dragged his daughter by the hair through the 
dark avenues to her home. Locked up, without 
the sHghtest hope of reaching Lassalle — she was 
told that he had immediately left the city — 
threatened with severer personal abuse, for Gen- 
eral von Doenniges was an old-style Teutonic 
father, the wretched girl lost all hope. Daily 
was she upbraided by her parents, by her sister 
and brother. The sister's engagement had been 
just announced to a member of some old family; 
so old that it was dusty. The brother played on 
her feelings with his tears. He would lose caste 
if his sister married a Hebrew. (He didn't say 
"Hebrew," but something opprobrious, pattern- 
ing after his father.) In a word, the entire family 
battery was trained on her, and as she despaired 
of Lassalle — she was assured by forged proofs 
that he was glad to get rid of her — and was sick 
in body as well as soul, she capitulated. She 
promised not to see him. What she didn't know 
60 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

was that Lassalle was raising heaven and earth 
to get at her; that he had appealed to Church, 
State, to the Court itself; that he had recruited 
a regiment of friends, and, finally, that he had 
bribed the unspeakable Therese, Helena's maid, 
with one hundred and eighty francs to carry a 
letter, planning an escape, to her mistress. 
Therese took the letter to the General and was 
given twenty francs more, thus selling the poor 
Helena for forty dollars. Pohce guarded the 
house. Negotiations were forced on Von Doen- 
niges by the now aroused Lassalle, who realised 
what a mistake he made when he had juggled 
with fortune, no matter what his exalted mo- 
tives. 

But the bhnd bow-god had shot his last ar- 
row, a spent one, and Mars entered as Cupid 
fled. Lassalle, at bay and furious after Helena 
had been forced to declare in the presence of his 
two friends — false ones she declares — that she 
would not see him, sent a challenge, accompanied 
by an insulting message.; to the General. One 
day Von Racowitza entered and bade her good- 
bye. He was going to fight Lassalle instead o£ 
her father, who was too old and feeble. She was 
incredulous. Lassalle in a duel ! Impossible! And 
he a dead shot — unhappy boy ! The next day the 
prince returned, pale, fearful. She was aghast. 
Lassalle wounded! A falsehood! Yet so he 
was, and fatally. Three days later, August 31, 
1864, the hope of Heinrich Heine, the hope of 
young Germany, died in agony of peritonitis, an 
61 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

agony that opium could not mitigate. At his 
death-bed was Countess Hatzfeldt. It is said 
he died repenting his crazy action. His funeral 
was followed by thousands. Torch-hght pro- 
cessions moved through Germany. He was a 
, dead god, a hero translated to the clouds. Many 
beheved that he had been crucified because of 
his love for the people. A bullet, fired from the 
pistol of a novice, had snuffed out the hfe of a 
man who was the most commanding figure in 
Germany at the time. He had been denounced 
as a brilliant charlatan. He was much more, 
though perhaps partially deserving that appella- 
tion. However, a man whom Bismarck feared 
and respected was something more than a brill- 
iant firebrand. 

And now our creduHty must be strained. 
Six months after Lassalle's interment, Helena 
von Doenniges, hating her parents, at war with 
the world and herself, turned to the only friend 
she had in all Germany — Yanko von Racowitza. 
He was half dying. The shock of events had 
been too much for his frail, sensitive nature. In 
pity and as a terrible penance Helena outraged 
the world by marrying the slayer of her lover. 
Five months later she buried him. What hell 
this woman traversed during her earthly pil- 
grimage not even her book reveals. She admits 
her weak will; she was between the devil and 
the deep sea — her parents and Lassalle. She 
was young, trusting, without an adviser. Her 
father was brutal, the flesh weak. She asks us 
62 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

to remember "que tout comprendre, c'est tout 
pardonner." But no one has pardoned her, 
least of all George Meredith, who in his most 
merciless manner has served readers with much 
psychology for "those acrobats of the affec- 
tions," as Helena and Ferdinand have been 
called. Meredith depicts Clotilde as the "im- 
perishable type of that feminine cowardice" 
to which he says all women are trained. This 
may be true of the characters in the book, not 
of Helena. Young women who are imprisoned 
and stuffed with lies about their lover are not 
cowardly if they weaken, especially after the 
shocking experience Helena had undergone with 
Lassalle. She had, brave as she was, put all to 
the test and had lost. Is it any wonder that her 
nerves played her false when the man — as she 
thought — had deserted her? At least she can- 
not be compared with the lady in Browning's 
Statue and the Bust. Helena greatly dared. 

As to her marriage, it was both an expiation, 
a charitable act to Racowitza, a defiance to the 
world, and also a cruel self -laceration. And there 
was possibly another, a more subtle reason than 
any of these. Flaubert at the close of Madame 
B ovary shows us Charles B ovary almost happy 
to talk about his Emma with her former lover, 
Rodolphe. Racowitza was the one person on earth 
to whom Helena could talk of Lassalle. Possibly 
her reminiscences hastened the poor lad's death. 
And young women don't kill themselves for love; 
that notion is the invention of conceited males 

63 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

or romantic feminine novelists. To live and to 
suffer was more difficult for the woman than to 
evade the consequences of her weakness by slid- 
ing out of existence. She was a martyr, no longer 
a weakhng, after her marriage. She has been 
banned by all the sentimentalists; whereas, if she 
had run away, as did Cosima Liszt- von Bulow, 
with a great composer (poor Von Biilow, who 
sacrificed himself to his wife and to his friend, 
Richard Wagner, is always left in the cold by 
these same sentimental folk), then Helena von 
Doenniges might have been called a heroine. 
Nothing succeeds like bathos. She should be 
pitied, not censured. And behind all this really 
tragic romance (not a tragic comedy) was some- 
thing the English novehst forgot — the mating 
of a young man with a young woman; which is, 
whether we subscribe to Schopenhauer's view or 
not, the most significant fact in the life of our 
planet. The world was well lost for love by Las- 
salle; for Helena von Doenniges nothing re- 
mained but the mastication of dead sea fruit. 



II 
A TRAGIC COMEDIAN 

A few years ago still another book by Mme. 
Racowitza, as she chooses to call herself, though 
two other husbands have given her their names, 
appeared in Germany entitled Von Anderen und 
Mir. From the summit of nearly sixty-eight 

64 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

years the heroine of one of the most romantic 
stories that filled all Europe with astonishment, 
pity, and indignation now surveys her past to 
the tune of over three hundred pages, and again 
has unstopped the tongue of scandal and has 
brushed away the dust from several forgotten 
tombs. Mme. von Racowitza has been more 
than frank. Her skill as a writer, her vast world- 
ly experience, her brilliancy, vivacity, and any- 
thing but grandmotherly regard for the conven- 
tions have resulted in a fascinating autobiog- 
raphy that is sure to shock many and in which 
we find significant light thrown on the memo- 
rable intrigue and death of Lassalle. 

The author's object in this second rehashing 
of the thrice-told tale is something besides Las- 
salle. With a self-confidence that borders on the 
naivete of Marie Bashkirtseff she begins with 
her love affairs when she was in pinafores. Her 
precocity, like that of Lassalle, suggested genius. 
Because of her family she met all of the shining 
lights and big bow-wows of art, literature, fash- 
ion, and pohtics. Upon her intellect there is 
little need to dwell; she assures her readers of 
its existence on every page. Of her beauty much 
could be said. Painted as a girl by Wilhelm von 
Kaulbach, with the famous Justus von Liebig 
an admiring third ; portrayed by Lenbach in the 
first lovely flush of womanhood, we might, 
nevertheless, set down to legend the miraculous 
reports of her beauty if there were not those 
alive who still remember her. She could write 

(>5 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

excellent English and was a fluent conversation- 
alist on many themes. In her last book there 
are three photographs, one after the Lenbach 
portrait, one taken in 1895, the third in 1905. 
The last betrays no relaxation of the pose nick- 
named "grande dame." She is the aristocrat 
who became a social outlaw, the Cleopatra, 
slightly matured, who outHved her Antony. The 
russet coronal has been replaced by venerable 
white hair; yet Mme. von Racowitza, to Judge 
from her book, is anything but venerable. 

She was born in 1843; this she does not tell 
us. Her father. General von Doenniges, came of 
northern stock. He was proud of his Viking (?) 
blood. Handsome and accomplished, he was 
taken up by the Prince Royal of Bavaria, after- 
ward Maximilian II. The young Pomeranian 
Protestant developed such a predilection for 
public life (he was at first protected by Humboldt 
at the BerHn University) that he followed his 
royal friend to Munich and from the household 
service was promoted to Minister and Bavarian 
Ambassador. As a girl Helena von Doenniges 
romped with Ludwig II, later the patron of 
Wagner. She relates that once she was caught 
by some of the servants engaged in pulling 
his curly black hair. Her mother, she admits, 
was the daughter of a rich and cultivated 
Hebrew family of Berlin, a member of the most 
cultured circle, to which the Von Mendelssohns, 
bankers; Rahel, Heine, Varnhagen von Ense, 
and other well-known people belonged. We say 
66 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

"admitted," for it may be remembered that one 
of the reasons given for excluding Lassalle from 
the company of Helena was his Jewish birth. 
When Rustow, the Swiss officer, friend of Las- 
salle, sought to calm the enraged General von 
Doenniges at Geneva he asked him: "Your 
wife, Mme. von Doenniges, was she not born a 
Hebrew? " "Yes," was the grudging reply, "but 
that was many years ago," As there always has 
been doubt expressed on this subject it is re- 
freshing to find that Mme. von Racowitza is so 
plain in her statement. Lassalle asked her if 
she had had many love affairs before their meet- 
ing. She put him off with a poetic allusion, but 
in her last volume she opens widely the closet 
of her heart and displays without mock modesty 
the skeletons that hang in it. There is quite a 
neat little row of them. At ten she analysed 
love Hke a Stendhal in petticoats. At twelve 
she was betrothed to a soldier of fifty, "ugly as 
an old monkey"; later she lost her heart to a 
young officer. It was a Romeo and Juliet epi- 
sode, moonlit gardens, sighs and vows, and the 
odour of wild roses; but Lassalle drove away 
these idle flirtings with Cupid (serious enough, 
she is fain to admit) and made hot love to the 
beautiful, capricious creature. She was nineteen, 
he thirty-eight. 

After Lassalle's death Marx, when asked by 
Sophie Hatzfeldt, the elderly lady who was Las- 
salle's benefactor, to write a brochure attacking 
Helena von Doenniges, refused. Liebknecht and 

67 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

Bebel intervened and the pamphlet became a 
veiled attack against the partisans of Lassalle, 
Hasselmann and Hasenclever. We mention 
these things, as Mme. von Racowitza has ap- 
parently forgotten some of them. In the Reich- 
stag, September 17, 1873, ^^^ years after Las- 
salle's death, Bismarck in the course of his 
historical controversy with Bebel said: *'The 
most intelligent and charming man I ever knew 
was Ferdinand Lassalle." 

After the death of Racowitza his widow went 
on the stage. Her hatred of her family was the 
chief reason; and she was penniless. She married 
Siegwart Friedmann, a German actor and a 
handsome man. In five years they separated; 
tired of each other, she hints. Her marriage with 
Serge von Schevitsch proved happier. 

Her pages teem with portraits of men and 
women whose names to-day are memories. 
Bulwer, Dickens, Liszt, Napoleon III, Eugenie, 
Makart, Paul Lindau, Paul Heyse, Wagner, 
Cosima Wagner — the hst is long. Her flight 
to America in 1877 with Graf von Schevitsch 
and her life here until 1890 gives her readers 
some interesting reading. She was friendly 
with the late Joseph Keppler of Puck, with 
the litterateur Udo von Brachvogel, and Fred 
Douglass. Of the last and his treatment in 
certain social circles she has something to say; 
a thorough-going democrat, she cannot forgive 
America for its handhng of the colour problem. 
She writes sharp and not always just or sensible 
68 



A HALF-FORGOTTEN ROMANCE 

words of us. We do not believe that Lassalle 
actually uttered all of the sentiments which she 
quotes. The most amazing confession of this 
woman is one she omitted to make in her book 
of 1879 (My Relations to Ferdinand Lassalle). 
It is this. She admits that hearing he was at 
PJghi-Kaltbad for his health she slipped away 
from Geneva and sought out the man she loved. 
There had been a separation and Lassalle be- 
lieved the affair was at an end. Mme. Raco- 
witza glosses over this meeting in the first reve- 
lation, but is very explicit in the second. This 
meeting in the mountains, cunningly planned by 
the girl, was the first link in the fatal chain of 
circumstances that ended in the catastrophe. 
The book is well worth translating. Perhaps if 
George Meredith had read it we should not have 
had The Tragic Comedians, for one survivor of 
the twain has told the tale in different fashion. 
Perhaps on the other hand the great analyst 
might have exclaimed: "See! She is my Clo- 
tilde Riidiger after all." She certainly remains 
more the tragic comedian than ever in Von 
Anderen und Mir. 

The sequel to her adventurous life was in the 
proper romantic key. She committed suicide in 
October, 191 1, at Munich. 



69 



IV 

THE REAL ISOLDE — WAGNER'S 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



" Tlmt I should have written Tristan I owe to you and I thank 
you for all eternity from the bottom of my heart." — Richard 
Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck. 

It was Nietzsche, was it not, who warned us 
against setting too much store by the auto- 
biographies of great men? Now the autobiog- 
raphy of Richard Wagner still reposes inviolate 
in the care of his widow at Bayreuth. Yet all 
his life was a self-confession, whether in deed, 
letter, or music. Music is the most subjective of 
the arts, and Wagner was the most subjective 
composer who ever put pen to paper. Every 
important act of his life — one is almost tempted 
to add unimportant, too — was speedily recorded 
in tone; and his music if it could be translated 
into speech would tell tales compared to which 
other modern tragedies might pale their romantic 
fires. 

To write a music drama like Tristan and 

Isolde, to paint in tones its swirling undertow of 

passion and guilt, demands a poet-composer who 

must feel first, subjectively at least, a tithe of 

70 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

the sensations he attempts to depict. The great- 
est love story in the world — for it is more com- 
plete and vaster in its consequences than the 
unhappy loves of Paolo and Francesca — set to 
the thrilling musical-dramatic score, is what 
Richard Wagner accomplished in Tristan and 
Isolde; and to achieve the gigantic task he under- 
went the tortures of an unhappy love second only 
in intensity to his music. What the man put into 
his music he had experienced. His drama throbs 
at times like an open wound, as did the souls of 
the enraptured pair in real life. This proceeding 
of poets and composers — perhaps of mathe- 
maticians and philosophers if we could but in- 
terpret their work — is as old as mankind. 
Goethe embalmed his loves in deathless verse 
and thus eased the aching pain of his heart — 
better say hearts! Heine made of the formula 
a tiny exquisite lyric, and at last the higher 
criticism is beginning to suspect that Shake- 
speare, who conceived Hamlet and Iago,Lear and 
Macbeth, Ophelia and Juliet, was himself made 
up of the elements of all these and a myriad 
other characters. Browning averred that it was 
the lesser Shakespeare who wrote the sonnets; 
all the worse for Browning's judgment. It may 
have been the lesser Wagner who almost dis- 
rupted the Wesendonck household; but why 
should we complain ! We are the gainers. Have 
we not a precious possession in Tristan and 
Isolde? This is the pagan view of the situation, 
not the ethical one. 

71 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

Nearly all the Wagner biographers have slurred 
the details of the musician's life at Zurich from 
1853 to 1858. The reason is a simple one: those 
who knew the facts were not allowed to or would 
not divulge them, and those who did not know 
perforce left an unexplained gap. Occasional 
rumours were blown by the wind of surmise 
about the globe. Every one has since been cor- 
roborated in the pubhshed letters of Wagner 
and Madame Wesendonck and the Belart study. 
These letters are volcanic on Wagner's side, 
though he does speak much of the weather, and 
his pains; the few included in the volume of 
Mathilde are by no means passionate. One more 
love affair in the career of a musical Ishmael 
like Wagner need not particularly interest the 
world. But this one, the Zurich episode, is of 
prime aesthetic importance. It gave birth to a 
magnificent music drama and its outcome made 
of Wagner again a wanderer, without a home. 
For a time he had been an anchored parasite in 
the household of the amiable Otto Wesendonck, 
and it is safe to assert that if the love and its 
subsequent catastrophe had not occurred we 
should have been the poorer of a masterpiece, 
perhaps several; for Die Walkiire was written 
at Zurich, as were parts of Die Meistersinger, 
Siegfried, even Parsifal — that bizarre compound 
of rickety Buddhism and hric-d-hrac Christian- 
ity — was planned, so rich and ripening were the 
influences of this love upon the fecund brain of 
Wagner, He began the music of Rheingold in 
72 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

1853, finished it in 1854; and the June of that 
year began Die Walkiire, finished in 1856; 
worked over Siegfried and finished several acts 
by 1857; from 1857 ^o ^^S^ was busy with Tris- 
tan, wrote the five songs — words by Mathilde 
Wesendonck — and in 1859 finished Tristan. It 
is no exaggeration then to say that these five 
years were the most significant in Wagner's life, 
the very flowering of his genius. 

So much for statistics. These tiresome figures 
are given to prove that Wagner himself, and fol- 
lowing him, the majority of his biographers, 
created the impression that his second spouse, 
Cosima Liszt, the divorced wife of Hans von 
Biilow, was the one passion of his lifetime, the 
mainspring of his music, the Eternal Feminine 
at whose loving command the little wizard 
wrought his miracles in tone. So were we all 
educated to believe this. Did not Richard 
Wagner swear to the fact many times? Did he 
not lay his hand on his heart and solemnly as- 
sure the world that to Cosima, his well-beloved, 
he owed all? And in doing so he was only as 
human as the rest of his sex — the last woman 
usually counts the most in the life of a man; 
this natural fact possibly gave birth to the prov- 
erb about straws on the back of camels. Some 
day the demi-god nonsense about this composer 
will be entirely dissipated and then behold — a 
man will emerge, with all a man's failings and 
virtues. Ernest Newman has knocked Wagner's 
philosophical pretensions to smithereens, as did 

73 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

Dmitri Merejkowsky the hollow sham of Tol- 
stoy's prophetic and religious vapourings. So 
the official autobiography of Wagner given to the 
world does not after all paint for us the com- 
poser's true portrait. 

Therefore, it was not Cosima Wagner, but 
Mathilde Wesendonck who started Wagner's 
imaginative machinery whirring. And the most 
singular part about the mutual letters of Rich- 
ard and Mathilde is that they were issued with 
the official stamp of Bayreuth. That Madame 
Wagner permitted this at once makes us sus- 
picious. How many letters are not in the col- 
lection, for there are many unaccountable omis- 
sions in this apparently frank volume! Let us 
relate the main facts. Wagner had been in love 
with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of a wealthy 
Zurich merchant, for six years. This is stated in 
a letter to the lady dated August 21, 1858. He 
met her in 1852, and a year later they were both 
immersed in a sea of passion and trouble. Yet 
we have been told by Glasenapp and Chamber- 
lain that Wagner only fell in love with her in 
1857, when he lived in a small cottage, "on the 
green hillock," close by Wesendonck's stately 
villa. Hans Belart, in his Richard Wagner in 
Zurich, published some years ago, was very 
frank in his disclosures of the affair, treating 
Wagner as if he were the veriest ingrate and 
home- wrecker; whereas, if Otto Wesendonck 
had cared to put his foot down, the intrigue, 
probably platonic, would have been soon stopped. 

74 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

But he did not choose to do so, and why is not 
discoverable in the letters that Wagner wrote 
Madame Wesendonck, or Otto Wesendonck — - 
that is, in the published letters. What Wagner 
thought of this husband we may see in the figure 
of King Marke in Tristan and Isolde, who sings : 
"O Tristan!" so sonorously and so sorrowfully 
when he discovers the pair. 

The sad side of the story was not We- 
sendonck, but Wagner's wife, Minna Planer- 
Wagner, who, sick, old, and neglected, ate her 
bread in sorrow at his table, a table provided 
by the bounty of others. She knew that Ma- 
thilde's influence had become paramount, and 
the letters and diaries of Wagner are full of naive 
complaints of her selfishness! "Destiny dooms 
me; having been constantly too good, and having 
submitted always, I have spoiled my wife so 
that her demands on me are becoming impos- 
sible." The principal demand was only for his 
love — impossible, indeed. He dedicated the 
Walkiire prelude to Mathilde in 1854. In the 
original poem of Gottfried of Strasburg, the 
potion it is which arouses Tristan and Isolde to 
their fatal undoing. 

Mathilde, with a keener precision than Wag- 
ner of the psychologic possibilities of the situa- 
tion, caused him to change this rather mechan- 
ical operation of fate to the mutual glances of 
the lovers. "His eyes on mine were fastened." 

Minna did not like this spiritual friendship. 
She was a simple soul, and the complexity of her 

75 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

husband's genius, its many voracious tentacles 
groping in the void for sympathy — is not 
genius always selfishly cruel ! — made her miser- 
able. And then, worst of all, she did not com- 
prehend his music. Rienzi was her favourite. 
Its theatric pomp and post-Meyerbeerian brass- 
bands were to her, educated as an actress, the 
acme of greatness. Rienzi, too, made money. 
It was popular. She loathed Walkiire; she de- 
clared that "It is an erotic and an immoral 
stupidity." Of the latter drama she wrote from 
Dresden, where she went for a cure: "They — 
Tristan and Isolde — remain nevertheless a 
couple too amorous." Fancy Robert Browning 
misunderstood by his poet wife. What tragedy 
is all this. Minna did not suspect the greatness 
of her little lord, who shook off his early operas 
with disgust. The future was to be his — and 
who was to pay the rent? quoth Minna. Ah, 
these practical wives of men of genius — why will 
they persist in feeding and lodging their hus- 
bands! Poor women — no Daudet has ever es- 
poused their cause, has sung their praises! 

In the letter alluded to there occur the most 
damaging charges. (This letter, or for that mat- 
ter many of the following details, are naturally 
not in the letters of Wagner and Madame We- 
sendonck.) Minna writes: 

"The fatal Tristan, which decidedly I do not 

care for (though not because of the reasons of its 

origins) is, I think, coming laboriously into the 

world, with long periods of intermission and great 

76 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

efforts! It seems to me that the travail under 
such conditions cannot be a happy one. The 
news of the death of the little Guido, youngest 
son of the Wesendoncks, has depressed me ter- 
ribly. I believe it is but the dispensation of 
Providence that God visits affliction on this 
heartless woman, spoiled by a happy life. How 
many times have I hoped that the Lord would 
bring about a change in her through sickness of 
one of her children ; but see ! I still tremble with 
the terror of the thought." 

" Reasons of its origins ! " "Heartless woman ! " 
These are strong phrases. In the meantime 
Wagner up at the villa — Minna at the cottage 
— was revelling in the bliss of a sympathetic soul. 
A beautiful creature, young, intellectual, poetic, 
Mathilde was a prolific author. Not only did 
she write five poems which were set by Wagner 
for soprano voice and piano, but dramas, Mar- 
chen, poems, epic and lyric, puppet-plays. Her 
muse was inspired by such themes as Frederick 
the Great, Edith, Gudrun — three dramas of 
hers — and also by the rhythms of music. Her 
work reads rather commonplace nowadays, 
though fluent in the romantic imagery of her 
time. To Wagner it must have appealed, for 
two of the five songs, In the Hothouse and 
Dreams, he called Studies for Tristan and Isolde. 
Dreams was utiUsed in the duo of the second act 
of Tristan, while in the prelude to the third we 
recognise the profile of In the Hothouse. 

Of rare culture then, Mathilde Wesendonck 

77 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

caught the many-coloured soul of Richard Wagner 
up into a fiery cloud, and only did he return to 
earth when Minna complained or his purse grew 
light. How the Wagners lived at this period was 
never exactly known until the recollections of the 
composer Roberd Freihern von Hornstein were 
published. Wagner was comfortably housed. For 
form's sake he paid a nominal rental. Every 
year from his friend Alexander von Ritter's 
mother he received eight hundred thalers. His 
Zurich admirer, Jacob Sulzer, looked after the 
table; a sportsman, he weekly sent him fish and 
game. The wine came from Wesendonck's cel- 
lar. Brockhaus, the publisher, gave him royal- 
ties on his books. And there were tantiemes from 
early operas. Von Hornstein relates that some- 
how or other money always flowed in — was 
there not Franz Liszt, golden-hearted Liszt! 
Elegance, plenty, refined surroundings, company 
— Ah, the Wagner legend pales day by day, that 
charming legend of his continual poverty! He 
had friends rich and eager to assist him. The 
only mortifying thing there is to note is that so 
many of these friends have since told the world 
how they helped the struggHng genius. Always 
let the world, as well as your right and left hand, 
know how much you lend, seems to have been 
the motto of this band. Liszt was the exception. 
He gave Hke a prince of the Renaissance and 
never took heed of his bounty. I, for one, am 
glad that Wagner accepted assistance. If ever 
the world owed a man a living, he was that man. 

78 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

We should be grateful to those who helped him 
to the leisure which gave us masterpieces — only 
wondering at the bad taste displayed by some 
in publishing their generosity. 

Gossip began to breed. Minna's attitude 
toward Mathilda was that of the implacably 
jealous wife. Von Biilow wrote Richter in 
1858 that Wagner was financially embarrassed, 
"something occurred between him and Wesen- 
donck." And Wagner hints to a friend : " I have 
good reasons for not asking him" — Wesen- 
donck — "to aid me." Liszt's Princess Sayn- 
Wittgenstein was called by the friends of both 
the enamoured ones, and repHed, as might 
have been expected: "I do not beheve the 
worst. But even should this be, one can say 
honestly that in this world everything is rela- 
tive, even justice and fidehty. . . . We truly 
say that genius belongs to all the world, and that 
every one claims his portion." Spoken like a 
merciful woman — and also as one rowing in the 
same boat with Mathilde Wesendonck. 

The crash occurred in 1858. It was not unex- 
pected. Otto Wesendonck's patience had been 
sorely tried. He loved Wagner, the man, and 
adored the genius of the musician. But there 
were limits. His wife gave a concert at the villa 
in 1858 and Wagner conducted. It was an event; 
musicians came from Germany to hear the new 
music of the exiled revolutionist. He was pre- 
sented with a gold baton. It was the gift of 
Mathilde and supposedly from Paris. Herr 

79 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

Siber, a Zurich goldsmith, made it and told the 
story to Belart of the pious deception practised 
by the donor. Evidently Mathilde knew her 
Richard! Liszt was expected to visit Zurich 
August 20. When he arrived, great was his 
amazement to find that Wagner had left three 
days before, left precipitately, better say fled 
the city. Why? Silence again, even in these 
new letters. In 1859 Mathilde wrote that Wag- 
ner had left "voluntarily." She continues: 
"But what is the use of questioning birds? We 
have commemorated that event in Tristan and 
Isolde. The rest is silence." 

But it was not silence. The facts are these — ■ 
never printed until Belart, through his dogged 
industry, unearthed them. The day of August 
II, 1858, Minna Wagner went to Otto Wesen- 
donck's villa, and after telling the mistress of the 
establishment what she thought of her, she in- 
formed the husband of the state of afifairs as 
she believed them to be. Wesendonck sent for 
Wagner. What happened then only two men 
could tell and they never did, though Wesen- 
donck curtly informed Wagner's curious friends 
that he had advised the composer to leave the 
town. Broken-hearted Wagner asked Mathilde: 
"Where Tristan is going wilt thou Isolde fol- 
low?" But there were children and a comfort- 
able home and a reputation to be considered 
— Isolde did not wave the burning signal torch, 
and the miserable man left after borrowing from 
Sulzer money enough to get to Geneva. There 
80 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

old Jakob Susstrunk, the barber, gave him the 
necessary means for a further flight to Venice. 
In Venice he arrived, sick, almost penniless, 
alone, all that he loved in Zurich, the future a 
waU of despair. 

He has related his experiences. While con- 
fined to his bed, the plaintive cry of a gondolier 
on a lonely canal gave him the piping of the 
shepherd in Tristan — at death's door, the in- 
stinct of the artist was not subdued. He noted 
down the melody, as he also registered for future 
use the heart-throbs of his passion and Isolde's. 

Wagner fell to keeping a diary. This he sent 
from time to time to Zurich. Mathilde answered 
discreetly. Otto was evidently in the secret, and 
his jealousy appeased. Doubtless he said to 
himself after the manner of fatuous musical 
amateurs: "It is a great thing that my wife has 
inspired the harmless passion of an extraordi- 
nary composer." At any rate, the correspon- 
dence which languished ceased, was renewed, and 
lasted until 1871. In the interim, Wagner had 
met Ludwig of Bavaria, and become famous, had 
seen Cosima von Biilow and stolen her from her 
husband; had, after the death of Minna in 1866 
— poor sacrificed Minna ! — married Cosima, 
and the old romance went up in smoke. Wag- 
ner had plotted suicide in Venice; luckily he 
changed his mood. A perfect final cadence this 
self-murder would have been for the greatest 
romance of his life. That it ended in chilly pro- 
prieties; that he wrote Mathilde, adding a post- 
81 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

script, regards from Cosima; that Siegfried, his 
son, was years later petted in the household of 
Mathilde (Wagner died in 1883, Mathilde in 
1902, a widow since 1896; she was born 1828) 
• — Subtle are the ways Life, the comedian, has of 
ending our little frenzies. "Auf Wiedersehen! 
Auf Wiedersehen! Soul of my soul, farewell! 
Auf Wiedersehen!" wrote Wagner before he left 
Zurich. He did not believe it was a genuine fare- 
well; but the Comic Spirit, which, according to 
George Meredith, enjoys the merry hamstring- 
ing of our destinies, took Wagner at his word, and 
though he saw Mathilde once more, the two were 
doomed to remain apart, and tragic comedians 
that they were, to end their lives in the odour of 
respectable married folk; Tristan and Isolde 
settled down in bourgeois comfort — but not to- 
gether! Destiny shook the dice and made of 
these two rebels conventional tax-payers and not 
citizens of eternity. Perhaps Paolo and Fran- 
cesca, those contemporaries of the stars, were 
braver. 

II 

WAGNER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

If the long-expected autobiography of Richard 
Wagner, My Life, had appeared after the death 
of Cosima Wagner a cynic would have been jus- 
tified in saying that the composer's widow was 
indulging in a posthumous revenge. Certainly 
nothing he ever wrote in his voluminous literary 
82 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

works has produced in the minds of his readers 
so definite an impression of meanness and mighti- 
ness as do these memoirs. The marked impres- 
sion is that Wagner was more Mime and Alberich, 
even Fafner, than Siegfried or Tristan or Wotan. 
His contemporaries have described Will Shake- 
speare as a lovable man, both merry and melan- 
choly in his moods. We like to think of him as a 
Hamlet or a Prospero. But Wagner kept all that 
was great, noble, poetic for his scores; in his 
private life he often behaved Hke a maUcious, a 
mahgnant monkey. He Ued. He whimpered 
when he begged, and he was always begging. 
He invariably deceived women attracted by his 
genius and a magnetic personality. And he 
abused every friend he ever had, abused them 
when Hving and after death in this book. A 
singularly repulsive, fascinating man and a brave 
one. What was his reason for giving to the world 
so unflattering a portrait of himself? 

In his Hfetime he made enemies daily because 
of his venomous tongue. Some evil fairy be- 
stowed upon him the gift of saying aloud what 
was in his mind, and not infrequently he hit the 
nail on the head, told the truth in high places 
where concealment would have been a virtue. 
He was a moral or immoral typhoon that swept 
away the evil and good alike in its elemental 
fury. 



83 



THE REAL ISOLDE 



We are informed that between the years 1868 
and 1873 Wagner compiled these memoirs from 
diaries and other mernoranda which he had pre- 
served for thirty-five years. He dictated from 
these notes to Cosima and, it is said, to Ludwig II 
of Bavaria. The book was set up by French 
compositors who did not understand German; 
twelve copies were printed and the type then 
distributed. Of these twelve copies eight were 
held by his wife and four were entrusted among 
some other friends. It is a significant fact that 
Friedrich Nietzsche read the proofs of the work, 
and while he never broke the seal of secrecy his 
knowledge of the pecuHar Wagner psychology 
enabled him to write his later attacks on the 
master from superior vantage-ground. Strictly 
speaking, there is less novelty in My Life than 
we had expected. The earlier biographies by 
Glasenapp and Henry T. Finck, the last-named 
being the best in English and ranking with the 
best in German, not to mention Wagner's own 
writings, contain much that is here retold by the 
composer. The funeral ceremonies of Weber, 
the story of Spontini, the first performances of 
Liebesverbot and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, 
and a score of other anecdotes have long since 
been in print. What is fresh is the details of 
Wagner's childhood, his courting of and marriage 
with Minna Planer, and the account of his first 
meetings with Cosima Liszt, then the wife of his 

84 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

dearest friend and worshipper Hans von Biilow. 
What he has omitted — or is it the fault of 
Bayreuth? — would fill two more volumes of the 
same size as these. He slurs over the Wesen- 
donck affair, which is all the more curious be- 
cause only a few years ago Bayreuth permitted, 
nay edited, the pubhcation of the Wagner- 
Wesendonck correspondence, chiefly his letters. 
Furthermore Wagner, the friend of kings when 
he died, seems to have forgotten completely his 
share in the Dresden uprising of 1849. That he 
was a red-hot revolutionist is proved by his Art 
and Revolution. An intimate friend of that 
sombre, enigmatic nihilist Bakunin (Bakounine 
is the better spelling), Wagner it was who in- 
ducted the harmless Roeckel into the movement, 
and not, as he vaguely insinuates, he who was led 
away by Roeckel. Ferdinand Praeger's Wagner 
as I Knew Him is a document of profound 
value, one that was not invahdated by Ashton 
Ellis's pamphlet entitled, 1849; a Vindication. 
But after all Wagner was only an amateur so- 
ciaUst. 

All the composers of his day, the big as well 
as the Httle, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Meyer- 
beer, Spohr, Marschner, Spontini, Hiller, Ber- 
lioz, were attacked by Wagner, who saw with the 
clairvoyant's eye of hatred and with a touch of 
his baneful pen transformed them into mean, 
grotesque, even vile personalities. Heine didn't 
escape, nor Hebbel and Auerbach. But all this 
is the obverse side of the medal, as we shall pres- 

85 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

ently see. This little, selfish monster of genius, 
sickly, puny in size, his mask of appalling ugli- 
ness, bowlegged (he wore a long cloak to hide 
this defect, for, as he said, he didn't wish to be 
taken for a Jew), with large, protuberant blue 
eyes, from which at times gleamed the most ex- 
traordinary fire; this stunted man, hated and 
despised, nevertheless could make himself very 
attractive. He was full of fun and boyish antics 
to old age. Praeger relates that when in London 
conducting the stodgy Philharmonic Orchestra 
Wagner's exuberance took the form of standing 
on his head. Wagner never grew up; his was a 
case of arrested moral development. He re- 
tained the naive spites and vanities and sav- 
ageries of his boyhood, while his intellect and 
emotional development had become those of a 
superman. He neither forgot nor forgave. He 
was Dantesque in his memory of personal af- 
fronts, and if he couldn't put all his adversaries 
in hell, as did the Italian poet, he remembered 
them in his autobiography, and in at least one 
instance he transferred the personality of a hos- 
tile critic into the scene of Die Meistersinger — 
Beckmesser is a supposed portrait of Eduard 
Hanslick, the Vienna music critic. Hanslick was 
present when the poem was read, and Wagner 
relates that he left deeply offended. Is it any- 
thing to wonder over? Nor is it surprising that 
Hanslick too never forgot. A trait of Wagner's 
is his constant amazement when a man or a wom- 
an he has insulted or betrayed dares to man- 
86 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

ifest feelings of retaliation. In these matters 
he is genuinely childish. To the very end, de- 
spite his imperial success, he never succeeded 
in bringing his inner nature into harmony with 
the external world. A man of genius, he was a 
stranger in his own land to the end. 

We have said that the significant portions of 
these memoirs are set forth not in those sections 
that deal with the artist's psychology but in his 
purely human relations. Of him it might be said 
that nothing inhuman was foreign to him. And 
we propose to deal with this side of him. Mr. 
Finck has painted a very sympathetic portrait, 
while Glasenapp is too much of Bayreuth to 
offer the entire truth. It is a pity that the 
monumental life begun by the late Hon. Mrs. 
Burrell was not finished. It is not printed but 
engraved throughout and illustrated in fac- 
similes of every document quoted. A copy is 
in the British Museum, and the original is in the 
possession of her husband. As a critic has said, 
"many as have been the biographies of the com- 
poser, and loud as has been the chorus of praise 
bestowed upon each, it was reserved for Mrs. 
Burrell to establish the accurate form of his 
mother's maiden name." My Life, notwith- 
standing its revelation of a mean, tricky, lofty 
soul, one that wavered along the scale from Cal- 
iban to Prospero, will rank among the great 
autobiographies of literature. Its place on the 
shelf will be between Benvenuto Cellini and 
Goethe. (Wahrheit und Dichtung aus Mei- 

87 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

nem Leben.) The irresponsible sculptor and 
the wise poet — surely Wagner had in him some- 
thing of the stuff of both. Unmoral, reckless, 
consumed by the loftiest of ideals, shoving aside 
all that opposed him, breaking faith with man 
and woman ahke, turning his sorrows into pas- 
sionate song, vainglorious and cowardly, lust- 
ful and outrageous for his ideal, always keeping 
his star in view, he was kin to Cellini and he was 
kin to Goethe. The world will not willingly let 
die such a book as this. 



n 

Nietzsche wrote some time about 1887-88, 
"Was Wagner German at all? We have some 
reason for asking this. It is difficult to discern 
in him any German trait whatever. Being a 
great learner, he has learned to imitate much 
that is German; that is all. His character it- 
self is in opposition to what has hitherto been 
regarded as German, not to speak of the German 
musician! His father was a stage-player named 
Geyer. A Geyer is almost an Adler (Jewish 
names both). What has hitherto been put into 
circulation as the Life of Wagner is JaUe con- 
venue, if not worse. I confess my distrust of 
every point which rests solely on the testimony 
of Wagner himself. He had not pride enough for 
any truth whatever about himself; nobody was 
less proud; he remained just Hke Victor Hugo, 
true to himself even in biographical matters — 
88 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

he remained a stage-player." Elsewhere Nietz- 
sche warns us against the autobiographies of 
great men. 

"His father was a stage-player named Geyer." 
Coming from Nietzsche this statement is not 
surprising, for he had read these memoirs while 
at Villa Triebschen. Why then, it will be asked, 
does this fact not appear in the first page of the 
autobiography? Despite asseverations to the 
contrary we suspect that Bayreuth edited not 
wisely but too well. Others besides Nietzsche 
had seen the opening line of the work: "I am 
the son of Ludwig Geyer." The late Felix Mottl 
in the presence of several well-known music critics 
of New York city declared in 1904 that he had 
read the above statement. He also told the same 
story to German journahsts. Mr. Finck as long 
ago as 1896 informed the present writer that at 
Wahnfried one could see the portrait of Ludwig 
Geyer, Wagner's "step-father," and of Wag- 
ner's mother, but not a sign of the real (or puta- 
tive) father. This statement we personally cor- 
roborated. Now this doesn't prove that Richard 
Wagner was of Jewish descent, though there is 
a strong reason for beUeving that the versatile 
Geyer, painter, poet, musician, and actor, may 
have had Jewish blood in his veins. To tell the 
truth, Wagner's mother displayed more marked 
Hebraic lineaments; hername was Bertz, as Mrs. 
Burrell discovered. Stranger still is the fact that 
Richard Geyer, as he was known at school, looks 
more like the Wagners than Geyer; he resembles 

89 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

his elder brother, a veritable Wagner, much more 
than he does his half (or whole) sister, Cecilia 
Geyer. So the physiognomists must make of 
this anomaly what they will. Of course the chief 
point of interest is Wagner's chronic hatred of the 
Jews, and his attack on the Jewish element in 
music. 

If the Geyer story be the truth, then the music 
of Wagner, sensuous, Oriental, brilliant, pom- 
pous, richly coloured, is Jewish, more Jewish than 
the music of Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn, or Gold- 
mark. But let us see what the original of this 
contention has to say himself on the subject. 

Of Wagner's own opinion concerning his pater- 
nity he leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader. 
Before such frankness the most seasoned will 
quail. Sir William Davenant is said to have 
blackened the memory of his mother in his not 
very laudable endeavour to prove that he was the 
natural son of William Shakespeare. Possibly 
that is why he is known to posterity as "Rare 
Sir William Davenant." Perhaps Wagner, in 
his anxiety to demonstrate that his father was 
a man of lively talents, hinted that his supposed 
father, Friedrich Wagner, was too much away 
from home of nights and that "even when the 
police official, his father, was spending his even- 
ings at the theatre, the worthy actor, Ludwig 
Geyer, generally filled his place in the family 
circle, and it seems had frequently to appease my 
mother, who, rightly or wrongly, complained of 
her husband." This is simply breath-catching. 

90 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

"Seems, good mother." Was there ever such a 
Hamlet-son to such a queen-mother? Geyer 
married her and her big brood after the elder 
Wagner had gone to another world. Richard 
was not called Richard Wagner till the age of 
fourteen. He was born May 22, 1813, in Leip- 
sic. The house was once a Judengasse, and is 
now the quarter of the fur merchants. 

Geyer did not live long. He took the liveliest 
interest in Richard, especially when he suspected 
that the boy had musical ability. The mother 
of Wagner came from Weissenfels, and she told 
her son that her parents had been bakers there; 
later authorities say mill-owners. There was an 
air of mystery surrounding her antecedents, per- 
haps because of some personal caprice. She 
would never give the correct spelling of her 
name, Perthes, not Bertz, being then the ac- 
cepted form. A "Weimar prince" had seen to 
her education at a high-class Leipsic boarding- 
school. More romantics ! That she was a clever, 
witty, well-educated woman there is no doubt. 
Harassed by poverty and a large family, she 
contrived through all of it to keep her head 
above water. Wagner writes that "her chief 
characteristics seem to have been a keen sense 
of humour and an amiable temper, so we need 
not suppose that it was merely a sense of duty 
toward the family of a departed comrade that 
afterward induced the admirable Ludwig Geyer 
to enter into matrimony with her when she was 
no longer youthful, but rather that he was im- 
91 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

pelled to that step by a sincere and warm regard 
for the widow of his friend." Wagner always 
spoke better of Geyer than of his father or 
mother. 

The first volume is in two parts. Part I, 1813 
to 1842, is devoted to his childhood and school- 
days, musical studies, travels in Germany, first 
marriage, and Paris, 1839 to 1842. Part II is 
devoted to the years in Dresden, 1842 to 1850, 
and comprises descriptions of Rienzi, The Flying 
Dutchman, Liszt, Spontini, Marschner, Tann- 
hauser, Franck, Schumann, Semper, the archi- 
tect; Gutzkow, Auerbach, Lohengrin, Spohr, 
Gluck, Heller, Devrient, his mother's death, 
Bakunin and the May insurrection, his flight to 
Weimar, Ziirich, Paris, Bordeaux, Geneva, and 
again to Zurich. The prose style of the orig- 
inal, not of the English translation, is free from 
Wagner's accustomed obscurities and clogged 
sentences, which we meet in his pretentious and 
turgid studies of music and the drama. Doubt- 
less Cosima, aided by Nietzsche, made these 
memoirs presentable, for Wagner, while a copious 
writer, is absolutely devoid of ear for the finer 
harmonies of prose; indeed, his prose is only 
one degree worse than the doggerel he too often 
calls poetry. 

His childhood was spent in dreams. He was 
very sensitive to things that terrified, such as 
ghosts, shadows, and the whole battery of Ger- 
man fairy tales. He read Hoffman's stories and 
they did him no good. He composed tragedies 
92 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

in the style of Hamlet and Lear; he adored 
Weber and Freischiitz; but the major impres- 
sion of his life was Beethoven's Fidelio. Later 
came the symphonies and the string quartets; 
yet the opera was, musically speaking, Wagner's 
starting-point. What will be matter of surprise 
to many is the fact that Wagner was no middle- 
aged student of music, as has been generally 
understood. He was always studying, only he 
began earlier than musical histories have told 
us. He was not a prodigy; he never half mas- 
tered the technique of the pianoforte, an instru- 
ment which he cursed, yet could never satis- 
factorily compose unless at the key-board, and 
sang like a crow. He began with Miiller and 
ended with Weinlig in theory. He had composed 
a pianoforte sonata by nineteen. He wrote 
songs. He longed to be a composer of opera. 
He was omnivorous in his reading, but passed 
his school examinations with difficulty if at all. 
In a word, a lad of genius who was determined 
to seek such spiritual nourishment as he craved 
and none other. No wonder his schoolmasters 
shook their heads. At the university he indulged 
in all the student vices. His particular advent- 
ures as a gambler, while dramatic, even thrill- 
ing, sound a trifle too much Uke French fiction to 
be credible. Petted by his sisters, alternately 
spoiled and neglected by a capricious though well- 
meaning mother, Wagner's home-life made up in 
affection what it lacked in discipline. His life 
long he was to feel the loss of a father, who 

93 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

would have shaped his conduct as well as his 
genius. 

His mother could not endure the notion of a 
theatrical career for her son — her dislike of the 
theatre was well grounded — so she allowed him 
to become a musician. He literally began con- 
ducting before he could read a scor«. However, 
the operas he waved his wand over were by 
Auber and Donizetti, and no doubt the youtniul 
leader used a piano partition. At Lauchstadt he 
met Minna Planer, a pretty, vivacious actress. 
Wagner was the musical director of the Magde- 
burg Theatre Company, of which Minna was 
also a member. They were both young; they 
loved, and oddly enough it was Richard who 
urged a legitimate union. The lady had been 
imprudent so often that it did not occur to her 
that any one would be foolish enough to marry 
her. She had a past, a daughter, Nathalie, being 
one of its witnesses. Wagner knew this. He 
tells, not without a certain gusto, the sordid 
story of her life, her early seduction. Why in the 
name of all that is decent he should dwell upon 
such details we may only wonder. If it is to 
blacken the memory of an unhappy woman who 
was his best, his only friend through the most 
awful trials, well and good ; base as is the motive, 
it is at least understandable. But while this 
aspersion puts Cosima on a pedestal it lowers 
Wagner, for he confesses he took the woman for 
better or worse; that after she ran away from 
him with a certain Dietrich he received her back; 

94 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

he accepted the illegitimate child; he accepted 
her doubtful temper, her ignorance, finally her 
tippling and drug-eating habits. At times he 
behaved like an angel of light. He forgave so 
much that you wonder that he didn't forgive all. 
Minna was not a companion for a man of sen- 
sitive nerves, as was Richard. What other 
woman would have been? And those critics who, 
inspired by Bayreuth, attack the unfortunate 
actress should remember that she it was who 
washed his linen in Paris during the three dark 
years from 1839 to 1842; who cooked, slaved, 
and saved for him; who stood with rock-bottom 
fortitude his terrific outbursts, his peevishness, 
his fickleness. 

It is a risky business, this Judging the respec- 
tive rights and wrongs of a husband and wife; 
nevertheless justice should be done Minna. He 
did not love her long; yet such a dance of death 
did this self-absorbed musician fiddle for his 
weary spouse that one reads with rehef of her 
death, not described in these memoirs. Goethe, 
the superb and icy egoist, as is commonly sup- 
posed, broke down entirely at the death of his 
wife, Christiane Vulpius, an uneducated woman 
of intemperate habits, pretty but of common 
clay. Kneeling at her bedside and seizing her 
hands cold in death, this so-called impassive poet 
and voluptuary cried: "Thou wilt not forsake 
me! No, no; thou must not forsake me ! " And 
Goethe was a greater poet than Wagner and a 
greater man. But Wagner was only too glad to 

95 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

be relieved of his matrimonial burden. He was 
already the lover of his friend's wife. 

Ill 

Perhaps Cosima may enlighten the world 
some day as to the methods she employed in 
managing her hitherto untamable spouse. Past 
fifty, past the storm and stress of a Hfe rich in 
miseries and economical in its distribution of fa- 
vours, Wagner knew that he was in safe harbour 
after he became the friend of the King. Cosima 
knew it too. Von Biilow was an exacting hus- 
band. Ferdinand Lassalle has described Cosima 
as a pedant in petticoats, though a true daughter 
of Liszt in her brilKancy and personal charm. 
She saw that Von Biilow would always remain a 
pianist, a very dry, though intellectual artist; 
that the future was Wagner's. She did not hesi- 
tate to sacrifice all, her husband, her father, and 
she went off with Wagner. Nietzsche, who later 
was intimate in this circle, must there have 
formed his conception of supermen and super- 
women. Nothing counted but personal in- 
clination; Siegmund and Sieglinde, Siegfried and 
Briinnhilde, Tristan and Isolde — each a law to 
himself, to herself. Poor Liszt was shocked not 
alone because of the moral aspect of the case, 
but because of the unhappiness brought upon his 
favourite pupil, Von Biilow; last and principal- 
ly, Cosima to remarry had to become a Protes- 
tant. 

96 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

Wagner describes his growing love for Co- 
sima. Once it took the freakishly sentimental 
desire to lift her into a wheel-barrow and wheel 
her home. Hardly Teutonic this, as Nietzsche 
would have said. (Nietzsche did not come off 
without scars in his friendship for Cosima. He, 
so it was asserted by competent authorities, 
loved her more than he did the music of Rich- 
ard.) Minna was cognisant of the growing in- 
trigue between her man and the other woman. 
She must have been quite broken by this time, 
for she had gone through the Wesendonck afifair 
and it m.ust be confessed had come ofif with flying 
colours in that stormy encounter. After the 
Dresden revolution Wagner, who had only manip- 
ulated the church-bells and had risked his friend 
Roeckel's life by sending him across the line for 
a water-ice, the day being hot, fled to Weimar, 
where he enjoyed for a few days the hospitality 
of Franz Liszt and his Princess Sayn- Wittgen- 
stein at their house on the hill overlooking the 
river Ilm, called the Altenburg. Naturally he 
says little of how he repaid his hosts at a ban- 
quet given in his honour. He abused all the 
guests, got drunk, and was only brought to his 
senses when Liszt threatened him with expulsion 
if he didn't apologise to Von Biilow, Tausig, 
Cornelius, and the others. He knew Liszt too 
well to hesitate, and did as he was told; therefore 
Liszt, Liszt who gave Lohengrin its first produc- 
tion, who sent Wagner thousands of dollars, 
who furnished him musical ideas, also a devoted 

97 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

spouse, Cosima, Liszt is shown in anything but 
flattering colours in this book. Verily Wagner 
was obsessed by the evil angel of truth-telling. 
Like the Httle child in Hans Andersen's story, 
he always saw the king naked. And this, 
whether we like his ingratitude or not, may 
constitute in the future the weightiest value to 
his utterances. 

But, honest to the point of shocking, he ex- 
hibits a clamlike reticence in a quarter where he 
might have been more expansive. Not that his 
comparative silence regarding his relations at 
Zurich with the Wesendoncks was actuated by 
any awakened sense of chivalry. No, his letters 
reveal the reverse. The truth is he cut a poor 
figure in that ugly episode. He tells his story 
as obliquely as he dare, but the facts are against 
him. There were too many witnesses for him 
to prevaricate, and we wonder that Frau Cosima 
printed this present story when the Wagner- 
Wesendonck letters (and Wagner's words) do so 
contradict the autobiography. 

If readers of My Life when disgusted by the 
pettiness of the author would only recollect that 
this pigmy with the giant brain gave us the sub- 
lime last act of Gotterdammerung — as sub- 
lime as a page from ^schylus or an act from 
King Lear; gave us the Shakespearian humour, 
fantasy, and rich humanity of Die Meistersinger, 
and, finally, the glowing love poem of Tristan 
and Isolde, then Wagner the sorely beset and 
erring mortal would be forgotten in Wagner the 

98 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

Titan. We smile at John Ruskin's attempt to 
prove that only a moral man can produce great 
art. Alas! What would he have said of Richard 
Wagner? Therefore, why should we sit in judg- 
ment on the man? His temperament was ab- 
normal, his health wretched. He was all in- 
tellect and emotion, and if in his last years he 
became unduly sentimental over the sufferings 
of dogs and guinea-pigs, also became a vague 
socialist, and indulged in some decidedly queer 
pranks during the Ludwig affair, we had better 
set it down to the strain of his early years, to his 
age, as was the Tolstoy case, and to his protract- 
ed conflict for his ideals. And what a glorious 
fighter he was ! In the deepest despair he would 
rouse himself and begin anew, and this lasted 
over thirty years. You forgive his childlike 
enjo3mient of luxury when it did come, after 
his fiftieth year. He was a "wicked" man like 
Tolstoy in his youth; both ended in a vapour 
of sentimental humanitarianism, though Wagner 
remained "harder" — in the Nietzschian sense. 
We confess to finding the second volume 
— a trifle less interesting than the first. It 
ranges from 1850 to 1861; the entire work is 
over nine hundred pages, and deals with the 
Nibelungen Ring, Zurich, Liszt, Schopenhauer, 
London, Venice, the various stadia in the prog- 
ress of Tristan and Isolde, Weimar, Paris, and 
the fiasco of Tannhauser, Vienna, and again Zu- 
rich, Stuttgart, and finally Munich. He had to 
flee Vienna because of debts, although he in- 

99 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

suited a wealthy Jewish banker by borrowing 
one thousand gulden from him, giving a banquet 
to singers and musicians, and when the banker 
visited him, calling down the stairs: "No dirty 
Jews are admitted." This phrase "dirty Jew" 
was often on Wagner's tongue. He insulted the 
great conductor Herman Levi thus. He mocked 
Tichhatschek, the tenor, who "created" his 
Rienzi, and retailed scandal about his early idol, 
Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, who was said to 
be fond of handsome young ofl&cers. Wagner 
spared no one. Karl Ritter, whose mother did so 
much for him, giving him an annual pension ; Van 
Hornstein, who refused him at the last a huge 
sum; Princess Metternich, Due de Morny, Louis 
Napoleon, all lent him large sums, as did Otto 
Wesendonck, yet he mentions them coldly. His 
brothers-in-law, Brockhaus and Avenarius, he 
slights for the same reason — they refused him 
money. To discover the real Wagner read the 
Liszt-Wagner correspondence. The two men 
stand revealed, Liszt, the antipodes of Wagner, 
noble, patient, always giving, always praising 
or encouraging, seldom criticising. And it may 
be confessed that at this period Wagner's feelings 
toward Liszt, as shown in the letters, are edify- 
ing. He was not altogether spoiled, else so many 
people wouldn't have loved, have worshipped 
him. Adversities, if they strengthened the key- 
stone of his art, made his temper unbearable. 
But no idiosyncrasy can be summoned as an 
apology for his behaviour in the Jessie Laussot 

lOO 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

affair at Bordeaux. And he tells it all so disin- 
terestedly. 

By temperament pessimistic, nevertheless in 
his artistic theories Wagner was an optimist. 
He had begun as a disciple in philosophy of 
Feuerbach, but a copy of The World as Will and 
Representation, by Arthur Schopenhauer, topsy- 
turvied the composer, whose later poems became 
tinged with the world-woe (Weltschmerz) of the 
cynical sage of Frankfort. This pessimism was 
personal in Wagner's case; it was not so much 
Weltschmerz as Selbstschmerz (self-pity). He 
sent the poem of The Ring to Schopenhauer, 
who abused it heartily to his disciples. Yet 
Wagner writes with smirking self-satisfaction 
that Schopenhauer had been much impressed. 
How much impressed he was we all know now. 
He pencilled at the end of the first act of Die 
Walkiire, where the stage direction is "quick 
curtain!" — "high time" (hochste Zeit). Scho- 
penhauer, who admired the music of Rossini and 
blew plaintive melodies on the flute, disliked the 
incest theme in Die Walkiire, and even denied 
the composer any musical ability whatever. 
Possibly this same Schopenhauer, whose chief 
work also opened the eyes of Nietzsche, was at 
the close one of the causes of the break between 
Wagner and his ardent apostle, the author of that 
brilliant, enthusiastic book, Richard Wagner in 
Bayreuth. 

Nietzsche had outgrown Schopenhauer when 
the music festival of 1876 inaugurated the open- 

lOI 



THE REAL ISOLDE 

ing of the Bayreuth music drama. His Wagner- 
worship had begun to wane; he saw his god 
in the full glare of worldly glory and he noted 
the feet of clay, noted that the ex-revolutionist 
of 1849 bowed very low to royalty, and also 
realised that Wagner did not propose to share 
his throne, not even the lowest step, with any 
one. He left Bayreuth thoroughly disillusionised, 
though he joined the Wagner family at Sorrento 
the following November. He published his 
Thoughts Out of Season, and there were those 
who detected the tiny rift in the lute of friend- 
ship. Wagner too felt the coolness, but he wrote 
Nietzsche a brief, cordial letter. In 1878 ap- 
peared Human, All Too Human, and henceforth 
Bayreuth was silent as the tomb on the name of 
Nietzsche. The friends never met again, and 
when Parsifal was produced in 1882 at Bayreuth 
Nietzsche threw overboard his Wagnerian bag- 
gage and forswore the ideals of his former master. 
The master had long since thrown Nietzsche to 
the winds. When a disciple ceased to be useful 
he was dropped, as were Von Biilow, Von Horn- 
stein, Ritter, and Liszt. In Meyerbeer Wagner 
encountered metal of his own kind; he could 
never catch this wily BerHn-born composer off 
his guard. Hence his eloquent abuse. 



102 



V 

CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 
I 

WHISTLER 

The exhibition of Whistler's paintings and 
pastels at the Metropolitan Museum (1910) 
ought to dislodge the last cobweb of prejudice 
clinging to the Whistler legend. Time, which 
disentangles all critical snarls, has allowed us to 
place in its true perspective the work of this 
American genius. He is no longer a barbarous 
solitary, a ferocious eccentric, nor is his orig- 
inality indisputable. Genius never drops from 
the skies. Wagner we know was a complex prod- 
uct, stemming from Beethoven, Weber, Liszt; 
Chopin, the unique Chopin, was firmly founded 
on Bach and Hummel. Swinburne, who amazed 
our fathers with his fiery metres, had in him 
much of Sappho and Baudelaire. And Whistler, 
a stumbling-block to criticism for so many years, 
was caught at various periods in the eddies of 
Courbet and Fantin-Latour, the Japanese, and 
Rossetti; even such an antipodal talent as Alma- 
Tadema's he did not disdain to profit from. 
The loan exhibition, arranged with such tact, 
tells us these things, and Whistler emerges 
103 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

more Whistler than ever. A styHst Hke Poe 
and Pater, not devoid of preciosity and at times 
of mysticism, he selected — his art is the very 
efflorescence of selection — a narrow path, real- 
ising that his salvation lay in finesse, not viril- 
ity; in languor, not ecstasy. Within his re- 
stricted compass he contrived to beat out a 
highly individual style. He is Whistler as Cho- 
pin is Chopin and Poe Poe. The names of this 
musician and of this poet are not dragged in 
haphazard. With both the painter had singu- 
lar affinities. And like Renan, he soon outgrew 
the "mania of certitude." 

It is a commonplace in the history of criti- 
cism that a great man is unappreciated during 
his epoch; yes, too often unappreciated, but not 
always unperceived. Sensible strictures were 
passed on the music-dramas of Wagner, stric- 
tures that to-day are as valid as when they were 
first published. Manet was badly treated by his 
contemporaries, yet what was said of his de- 
ficiencies still holds good. Whistler, personally 
a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night, made 
confusion worse confounded by his antics, his 
butterfly affectations and waspish vanity. (Oh, 
if Wagner hadn't written those terrifying books 
of his to prove that he was Wagner, when the 
first bar of the introduction to Tristan and 
Isolde stamped him as a god among composers!) 
Whistler, like Baudelaire, and doubtless pat- 
terning after the poet of spleen and ideal, fash- 
ioned his own legend. He was not only a genius 
104 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

but he acted like one; thus would the world bet- 
ter understand him. If he had retreated to his 
ivory tower as did De Vigny, we might not have 
found him out until after his death. This was 
the case with Rembrandt. "I'll show you!" 
said James, and he did show them. Knowing 
that in London he would shine by sheer com- 
parison, he left Paris, where he was but Whis- 
tler, in such company as Fantin, Manet, Degas, 
Courbet. He had his admirers in England, and 
they fought as the Irish at Fontenoy in his be- 
half. He had his enemies, and they put their 
fingers on his sore spots and he winced. But 
they, too, advertised him. The mystery is not 
that Ruskin failed to understand Whistler but 
that Whistler was so lacking in humour as to 
fight Ruskin with such a weapon as The Falling 
Rocket; Ruskin, who had missed Velasquez and 
how many masters, what could he say before 
such a picture? Let us not mince words. Time 
is not treating the Whistler canvases with a gen- 
tle touch; the " tone of time" is not for his sur- 
faces. More disquieting still is the fact that he 
does not seem so wonderful as he did two decades 
ago. Some of his works are hopelessly outmoded. 
Nor is this because better acquaintance has bred 
a certain sense of satiety. On the contrary, what 
is beautiful in Whistler will remain beautiful 
until the last patch of paint has peeled off the 
canvas. In a word, we mean that all Whistler 
is not great. He was ever experimenting and he 
was often uneven. 

105 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

The collection lacked the three master-works : 
the portraits of his mother, of Carlyle, of Miss 
Alexander. Yet it was very satisfying, as it gave 
us a glimpse at the various stages of his develop- 
ment. How normal that development was! A 
romantic at the start, he played with the formula 
of realism. His Blue Wave is decorative if com- 
pared with Courbet's. The Japanese motive 
was then sounded. Paris at one time was Japan- 
ese mad, thanks to De Goncourt. Whistler saw 
the possibilities of this new art and he absorbed 
it as Wagner absorbed Liszt and Berlioz. It 
added another note in the gamut of the paint- 
er's palette. Symmetry was not altogether sup- 
planted by asymmetry, but the slight perpetual 
surprise and deviation from the normal line in- 
troduced a strange and delicious dissonance in 
the harmonies of a man for whom music was 
the arch type of the arts. He saw the rhythmic 
irregularities of the Japanese, saw their " going to 
nature in a frank, gipsylike manner," above all 
realised their harmonic sense, and grafted all 
upon Western art, making it richer, bolder, more 
novel. Withal he remained Whistler. 

How Whistlerian we may see in his portraits 
and nocturnes. As through a palimpsest there 
struggle to light several texts, so in the Whistler 
pictures we can say: Here he went to Japan. 
There he knew Rossetti (the White Girl). 
Here and there he saw through the eyes of 
Velasquez. But he was invincibly Whistler in 
spirit. And this is the key-note of him. He is 
io6 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

psychic. He paints the spiritual emanations of 
a personaHty. He would have jested if any one 
had said that to him, for like all great artists he 
was hugely concerned with the mastery of his 
material. Yet who ever plunged deeper (among 
modern masters, Carriere perhaps excepted) into 
the enigmatic well-pit, into the core of personal- 
ity? Those transcripts of souls, of Lady Archi- 
bald Campbell, of Sarasate, of Rosa Corder, of 
the Lady Sophie of Soho, of Francis Leyland 
(for that portrait of Florence Leyland is an 
apparition), of Miss Alexander, finally of his 
mother (we beheve that the Carlyle just misses 
fire as a psychological document despite the mag- 
nificent painting), are something more than har- 
monies, arrangements, and symphonies; as the 
scherzos and ballades, impromptus and etudes of 
Chopin are more than decorative titles. The 
decorative side of Whistler's gifts has in the end 
been over-emphasised. He feared the literary 
pitfall as Chopin feared the sentimental. Their 
escape was but a sign that both men were more 
preoccupied with subject matter than they would 
acknowledge. Both were capable of pyrotech- 
nical flights into the azure, where they trilled in 
company with the morning stars; Whistler Hke 
Chopin could toss aloft a tone and spin from it 
variations that dazzled. But then he was not 
the greater Whistler any more than the Pole was 
the greater Chopin when he wrote his variations 
on the themes of other composers. 

Whistler is not "Hterary"; he is a poet, and a 
107 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

poet as mysterious and intangible as Poe. The 
psychology of his sitters he sought, and then 
having seized the salient trait, he placed the por- 
trait in a penumbra at once mystic and evoca- 
tive. It was as if he wished to hide their secret. 
We know as we never knew before the virtuoso 
of Pampeluna, Pablo de Sarasate, as he fingers 
his fiddle-strings and with his transverse bow 
makes an unforgettable decorative fulcrum for 
the composition. Accepting Whistler's word 
literally, we are looking at the Spaniard as he 
comes down stage, his eyes, his white shirt, his 
swarthy face so many notes in the colour scheme; 
nevertheless, spiritual overtones are sounded, 
and in the silver silences the soul of the violinist 
is singing. There is muted music in many of the 
canvases; not without reason did Whistler search 
for analogies to music. He was a profound har- 
monist, one who at the last cared little for the 
pattern; when younger the pattern curiously 
intrigued him. The Music Room — which looks 
old-fashioned and mid-Victorian in its sharp 
definitions — the Golden Screen, Lange Leizen, 
these are excursions into the rare country of 
porcelain and linear falsifications. Virtuosity 
rules, humanity is all but excluded. The rather 
opaque paint of The White Girl is not very se- 
ductive (white against white is no longer a mira- 
cle; besides, some of his admirers had never seen 
Velasquez). To call the picture a symphony was 
pretty. Whistler did not borrow the word from 
the critic Mantz but from a poem by his friend 
io8 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Theophile Gautier, Symphonie en Blanc-Major, 
which appeared in Emaux et Camees (1852). 
The three girls in white are too; suggestive of 
Albert Moore, are thin and unreal. The senti- 
ment in the Little White Girl is not only Ros- 
settian, but the pose, hair, and forms of the head 
are also his. A picture of exceeding charm. 

There is more character divination in the Rosa 
Corder, which is as aristocratic as the art of the 
aristocratic Whistler. She is not the dear Lady 
Disdain who looks over her shoulder in the por- 
trait of Lady Archibald Campbell; yet what a 
proud profile, what superb placing of the figure! 
How Whistler sets echoing the browns and 
blacks! A masterpiece, which ought to be re- 
christened Noli me Tangere. Obviously the 
Little Lady of Soho was the result of a visit to 
the Monna Lisa. The sweetly folded hands, the 
pose of one who listens to an invisible presence, 
and with the nuance of a smile exquisitely ex- 
pressed — all this and a nameless aura of mem- 
ories tell us that Whistler, consciously or un- 
consciously, was affected by the great Itahan at 
the Louvre. We cannot admire much his male 
portraits. Whistler's was not a masculine genius. 
The salt of sex is missing. His Blacksmith is a 
poseur. There is nothing but papier mache in 
those muscles, and the countenance is operati- 
cally fierce. We never hear the fundamental 
basses of Velasquez, Holbein, Rembrandt. Nor 
need we miss them. There are crepuscular com- 
pensations. And for his lack of substance (not 
109 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

overlooked by his early critics) have we not the 
subtlest play of harmonies since Velasquez? His 
lyric, vaporous creatures are of the same stuff as 
the Lenore, Ligeia, and Annabel of Poe; wraith- 
hke, they belong to a No-Man's Land. But 
Whistler does not sound the morbid note of Poe, 
He is sane, and his strangeness is never bizarre. 
He is primarily concerned with essences. In 
the true sense he is the delineator of the moral 
nature. With a veiled intensity that is abso- 
lutely magnetic in its power he adumbrates the 
moral temperament of his model. Doubt this 
and you doubt the truth that irradiates from 
the portrait of Comte Robert Montesquiou de 
Fezenzac. 

Those Tanagra-like female figures in the pas- 
tels are for many the chief attraction. Colour 
notes, they proclaim the master of values. Here 
is the transfiguration of the real, the transposi- 
tion of earth and sky and the eternal feminine 
into the most evanescent terms of art. What 
simplifications! What fluidity! No hint of the 
effort to conceal the effort of an effortless art — 
occasionally felt in the larger compositions, de- 
spite Whistler's famous boast. Here he is im- 
pressionist, not, hke Monet, juxtaposing tones, 
but playing diaphanous variations on a single 
tone in artful loops — Velasquez is not subtler 
in his modulations. George Moore's theory, 
that if the American artist had been physically 
a bigger man he might have painted master- 
pieces like the Spaniard, gives us a shock. Then 
no 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

we should have lost the mystic chord, and that 
absent the less Whistler he. And at the risk of 
being disloyal to his paintings, let us confess to 
our beHef that the real Whistler is the magician 
of the etchings and lithographs. With Rem- 
brandt and Meryon he makes one of the glorious 
trinity of visionaries. 

n 

ARTHUR B. DAVIES 

A PAINTER-VISIONARY 

As painter Arthur B. Davies is a realist, 
though a mystic in temperament. The con- 
junction is not rare even in this derided land of 
dollars. Now your true mystic abhors the vague; 
with crystalline clearness his vision embraces the 
minute and magnificent things of the world about 
him. And equally real is the life of the spirit. 
A very wrong notion it is that the mystical man, 
let him be artist, priest, statesman, or poet, pos- 
sesses a rambling intellect or stammers enigmas 
or deals in the minor black arts. The mystic is 
eminently practical. Clairvoyant in spiritual 
matters, the very intensity of his inward vision 
when applied to mundane affairs enables him to 
solve problems which puzzle practical persons. 
All men of action are dreamers. Little need to 
offer examples. Saint Teresa, a mystic of fiery 
imagination, was an astounding organiser. Many 
other names come to the memory. 
Ill 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Davies is a man for whom the invisible world 
exists — a world which flows harshly or rages 
serenely about us, soundless, pervasive, puissant 
as magnetic waves that beat upon the shores of 
an electric ocean. But endowed with acute 
organs of observation and a master of technique 
he is enabled to record upon canvas his dream of 
the visible and invisible. That is why we call 
him both realist and mystic. He is no purveyor 
of fuliginous incantations, of shadowy night- 
mares and esoteric hysteria. A primitive, he 
sides neither with Blake nor Botticelli, admiring 
both. He has remote affinities with some of the 
English Pre-Raphaelites, but at the very point 
where their system breaks down, where their 
vision becomes schematic and not vital, Davies 
has passed on. He is often elliptical in his 
themes, but never obscure. His ideas may be 
philosophical, but they are emotionally set forth. 
A Romantic, he never loses view of the signifi- 
cant. The commonplace is charged with mir- 
acles for him. You return to his pictures not 
alone for any lurking messages but for their 
magic beauty; they are at once a gracious pat- 
tern and a noble symbol. 

The mental processes of an artist at work, no 
matter if tracked down by himself, always con- 
tain an incommensurable quality. With an idea 
an artist begins to weave his arabesques; it is 
the validity or the strength of that idea which 
conditions the ultimate fate of the pictorial com- 
position. Davies starts with a well-defined idea. 

112 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

He never improvises on canvas. The aspect of 
a scene, say in California, appeals to him, not 
only for its suggestion of space composition — 
in which element of his art he is a master — but 
for some idea which we may call mystic. From 
his functional line — and what a virile white line 
it is ! — to the last spot of colour, he develops his 
subject like a musician building up a symphony. 
Yet there is in all remarkable art some spot 
where the creative process seems to focus more 
fiercely. It may be in the rhythmic flow of the 
sky-line with cloudshine overhead; it may be 
in the values of movement as expressed by the 
indolent gait of a woman, or a conflict or an out- 
cry of tones. Subject doesn't much matter: the 
painter's genius is not always spilt in illustration. 
Three passionate scratches of a Rodin sketch or 
the flight of exotic birds in a Japanese print 
sometimes tell us more of the artist's soul than 
would an entire museum. So we discover in the 
Davies pictures those dissonances of form, feeling, 
colour, which leap like flame to the eyes. His 
romanticism is less the choice of an obvious situ- 
ation or landscape than it is his ingrained manner 
of considering the bright appearances of life as a 
symbol; but this symbolism must be interpreted 
in terms of paint. His world is all out of doors, 
clear, smiling, sinister, prophetic, but nature ever. 
Sheer fantasy, and perhaps a touch of the per- 
verse, forces him at times to twist his patterns, 
and he loves to introduce into his landscapes 
gentle unicorns and other fabulous beasts, as did 

113 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Arnold Boecklin, or, earlier, Pier di Cosimo 
(Piero di Lorenzo), the gay inventor of Floren- 
tine masques and the master of Andrea del 
Sarto. Davies admires Piero for his animated 
humour and for his slight deflection from the 
normal. 

To set the American painter speaking of Bot- 
ticelli is to discover in his sincere utterances 
what would be considered heresy. For instance, 
he is entirely with Bernhard Berenson when that 
writer declared that Botticelli is the greatest 
artist of lineal design that Europe has ever had. 
Educated here in the technical requirements of 
his art, Davies visited Europe only for spiritual 
nourishment. He is not the product of the 
schools, and while the academic artists may ques- 
tion his power he is suspiciously regarded by the 
younger men, who are now all for realisation. 
Nevertheless, you may note that Davies has not 
neglected manual dexterity. His studies of the 
nude display a mastery of tactile values and of 
the values of movement that are astonishing. 
Seldom does he carry a figure as far in oils as 
in black and white. Is it his subject matter 
that puzzles and offends? Hardly. There are 
Boecklin the Swiss, Franz Von Stuck of Munich, 
Max KHnger in his etchings, Gustave Moreau 
— these artists dead and alive painted and 
etched more fantastic scenes with satyrs and 
mermaids, centaurs and Daughters of the Devil, 
than Davies could accomplish in a lifetime. 
No one disputes their technical facility. But 
114 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Davies is different. His abundant gifts of draw- 
ing, colouring, designing, while they stamp him 
as the artist born as well as trained, are at 
the service of a potent imagination, an individ- 
ual imagination. One does not hesitate to ad- 
judge him the most original of American painters 
and the peer of those living European artists who 
are dominated by ideas and not by the brush. 
Imagination, then, is the master trait of Arthur 
B. Davies. Let us see to what use he puts it. 
First as to his artistic ancestry. We have 
called him a Primitive for want of a more suit- 
able phrase. He has retained much of the na- 
ivete of the Primitives, something wellnigh im- 
possible in this age of inartistic conventional- 
ism. That childlike delight in the presence of 
nature and of children which we are pleased to 
credit to the early Italian painters only is an- 
other trait of his. He has the "innocence of the 
eye," though his formulas often resemble those of 
the Florentines. But to slight one's age is im- 
possible. Davies belongs to his century; fur- 
thermore he is an American. The escape which 
art offers he presents in individual symbols. 
Arcady with sleepy damosels as seen in the dark 
glass of Burne- Jones's wizardry is not shown by 
Davies; it is with the vital impulses of nature 
that he is concerned. His Calif ornian land- 
scapes proclaim the artist of the New World, not 
the dreamer of the Old born out of his day. His 
handling recalls certain traditions of Florence. 
He may be entitled archaic. What precisely is 

115 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

an archaic painter? Mr. Berenson answers the 
question: "For no art can hope to become 
classic that has not been archaic first. The dis- 
tinction between archaistic imitation and archaic 
reconstruction, simple as it is, must be clearly 
borne in mind. An art that is merely adopting 
the ready-made models handed down from an 
earlier time is archaistic, while an art that is go- 
ing through the process of learning to recon- 
struct the figures and discover the attitudes re- 
quired for the presentation of tactile values and 
movement is archaic. On the other hand, an 
art that has completed the process is classic. 
... A painter still among us, Degas, may boast 
of being archaic." 

Davies is archaic. His art is a "becoming" 
and not frozen into a rigid S3anbolism. He is an 
admirer of Degas, and he places Cezanne above 
Monet for the significance of his landscapes, just 
as he recognises the power of his nudes. And 
after all the nude is the touchstone. With Botti- 
celli the passion for presenting movement- values 
closed his eyes to many other fascinating pos- 
sibilities. Blake's swirling lines are an abstract of 
the idea of form; and that ceaseless experimenter 
Edgar Degas has arrived almost to the disintegra- 
tion of movement that we see in the Rodin 
sketches. Davies severely practises elimination 
of non-essentials. He completes but never fin- 
ishes a picture, using the word in its ordinary 
connotation. His themes overflow their frames, 
and like some poetry the memory is full of their 
ii6 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

spiritual repercussions and overtones. Tech- 
nically speaking, he paints with great directness. 
Those who believe his work to be the outcome of 
laborious "cookery" and a pasticcio of many 
styles would be surprised to know with what 
clarity he plots in advance his pictures, with what 
boldness and fire he attacks them, in what a fury 
of execution he terminates them. Yes, those 
majestic, sweeping landscapes with luminous 
washes of sun and cloud, trees that loom up 
grave and gianthke to the sky, those long-limbed 
nudes with mystical gaze and strange gestures, 
are all planned largely, are the result of much 
pondering. Davies creates beauty. Sometimes 
he nods — aU imaginative souls do — though he 
nods less often than one would think if his fec- 
imd invention and versatility be considered; 
that he has not yet fully realised himself, he 
knows. The dreamer and painter wage daily a 
conflict. But he is slowly achieving a unity of 
matter and manner. 

His landscapes are not mineral or metallic 
like the airless backgrounds of Gustave Moreau; 
they exist in the West. CaUfornia is Davies's 
favourite region. He gives us the living pano- 
rama of glorious California. He has discovered 
the soul of California. Men have been painting 
there for a lifetime and they have seen her beau- 
ties through the eyes of the Barbizon tradition. 
Not so Davies. He shows some valleys from a 
pinnacle, valleys upon which the hosts of heaven 
and hell could war, a carpeted plain for Armaged- 
117 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

don. His interpretation of what he sees springs 
spontaneously. A woman's figure points earth- 
ward or crooks a beckoning finger as if the sons 
and daughters of men were invited to enjoy the 
fulness and plenty of the earth. No hint here 
of the scene-painter's California. And on the 
borders of what exquisite and mysterious seas 
does Davies conduct us. The limpidity of his 
lakes, the hieratic awe he infuses in the enlacing 
attitudes and gestures of the anonymous groups 
in his foregrounds! It is not paradise, for his 
earth is real; these women whose eyes are as 
subtle as Da Vinci's, whose limbs are as fluent 
and lean as BotticelH's, whose hair is blown upon 
by strange airs — these women may claim Davies 
as their artistic progenitor. And how strong is 
the salt and savour of sex in all his compositions ! 
No mere arabesques are his creatures. The viril- 
ity of Davies is unmistakable, but it never takes 
the questionable grimace of a conventional vo- 
luptuousness, nor has it the suggestion of de- 
cadent paganism. It is clear and sweet, this 
conception of sex. When he clothes his people 
in modern garb they are quite as vital — that 
is, if anything draped is ever as thrilling as the 
nude. 

And that Harlem Bridge picture. It is not a 
set landscape, but an interpretation of a mood, 
the fusing of Davies's nocturnal vision and the 
actual forms and facts of the vicinity. How 
those children interest. The Davies children 
are real, but seen through the prism of a mystic. 
ii8 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Look at his Sea Wind and Sea. Or his mighty 
Forest with its msenads. He is filled with the 
earth spirit. Hemmed in by thousands of ques- 
tions, dumb yet eloquent, this poet-mystic has 
no need to summon spirits from the vasty deep. 
His very existence, the earth beneath his feet, 
the azure above him, are miracles. We walk 
with the "tender and growing night" in the 
symbol-land of Davies. Nature possesses him 
not so much for her lovely and enticing curves — 
and those he has not failed to praise — as for 
her deathless interrogations. He portrays the 
salient characteristics of the landscape, but in its 
general composition he searches for its universal 
import. It is the key-note, the releasing answer 
of the Da\'ies art; in tune with the universal is 
only phrasing a very old truth. To achieve this 
harmony, to compass the larger rhythms, our 
painter has thrown overboard much ballast. 
He has avoided the genre picture, the obviously 
dramatic anecdote, the pretty, shallow land- 
scape and decoration for the sake of decoration 
and the banal rhetoric of the flesh. For motive 
he has gone to myth. But what myth? What 
countries have furnished the myths of Davies? 
We believe that his myths are his own, though he 
reads the poets, and in Home's Orion — to give 
one example — he found inspiration for a hunt- 
ing-scene, one is tempted to say the hunting- 
scene, so universal is its application. The hunts- 
men are indeed up in this novel America. As a 
space composer Davies produces in us the sensa- 
119 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

tion of a "happy liberation," There is hugeness 
without emptiness on his mountain tops and 
under his monster trees. Unless we are greatly 
mistaken he has all the qualifications for a mural 
decorator on an epical scale. 

But he prefers his myths, his panels covered 
with radiant creatures, unclothed and in their 
right mind, moving in processional rhythms to 
some unknown goal. Nor do we wish to know 
this goal. Great art is an instant arrested in 
eternity. These men and women are enigmatic, 
their secret in the skies. One woman of noble 
contour walks as in a dream through a delicious 
landscape. (A Measure of Dreams, now hang- 
ing in the Metropolitan Museum.) She has come 
from a dream and is crossing the bridge of transi- 
tion; soon she shall be enveloped in the splen- 
dours and terrors of a new dream. She is ever in 
motion. Is she the ideal that haunts the artist 
soul? We have the sense of something vanish- 
ing, like music overheard in sleep, or of a beauti- 
ful mournful face that melts into the chambers 
of your brain, elusive yet more real than the 
noises of the naked day. Such pictures as these 
translate into paint Mallarme's "silent thunder 
afloat in the leaves." The uneven silhouette of 
a mountain top, the incandescent glow of light, 
a light in which human forms are decomposed, 
yet endure and weave the measures of some an- 
tique dance, a country out of time but not of 
space — these luscious and sonorous landscapes 
fill us with wonder at their beauty. 

I20 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

Davies by reason of his imaginative tempera- 
ment can sound the notes of the profound, of the 
sublime. Indeed, he is too much given to the 
apocalyptic. Like Maeterlinck he can evoke a 
nameless fear oppressing vast multitudes. Nor 
is Davies so breath-taking, as if in a cell without 
windows or doors, as was the early Maeter- 
linck. He knows the secret of "life-enhancing" 
values. There is a panel which was covered with 
humans expecting some mighty visitation, some 
spiritual or cosmic upheaval. The trees bend 
helplessly before the invisible wrath and iron 
wind of destiny. Horror is exhaled from the can- 
vas, a mystic fear that crisps the nerves. Yet 
unintelligible symbols are not employed. A key 
is seldom needed for these pictures; on the con- 
trary, their titles too often confuse. We saw 
the designs for his exhibited but unfinished work, 
The Girdle of Ares (which is literally Greek), and 
were stirred by the writhing Titans, with their 
Angelesque vigour of line and movement. 

One of the rivals to A Measure of Dreams is 
the large, symbolic picture Maya, Mirror of 
Illusions. The ten elect virgins with mauve 
dapphng their nude backs and thighs gaze wist- 
fully into the mirror of Maya; Maya, the great 
mother of illusions. The landscape might serve 
for D'Annunzio's novel. Virgin of the Rocks; 
we are content to suggest it stenographically. 
The colouring is rather pallid, the mood chilly, 
but as ice burns, so is there spiritual heat in this 
enraptured parable. The only masters we may 

121 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

compare it to are Botticelli — the women make 
a sweet Botticellian loop — or to Edward Burne- 
Jones's Mirror of Venus. Yet it does not pro- 
ceed from the Primavera, nor has it the rich, 
smoky enchantment of the Burne- Jones. What 
does it signify? Isn't the title expressive enough? 
Maya — Illusion ! Of all earthly illusions, is 
there any other comparable to woman — even 
when she boasts mauve reflects? The mirror 
may be the mirror of matrimony! But hush! 
These are fables for the disillusionised middle- 
aged. Crescendo shows seven girls (seven, the 
mystic number; seven, the number of tones 
in the scale), and the crescendo is unmistak- 
able. 

The best way to approach the art of Davies 
is with an open mind. Like what you like, 
dislike what you dislike. One man's paint may 
be another's poison. If a figure seems backed 
like a whale, weasel, or camel, then it is — for 
you; but don't expect your neighbour to follow 
your suit. He may see shrewder into the clear- 
obscure of the painter-poet's mirror and discern 
fairer visions. If we could only realise how 
simple in expression are the best of his canvases, 
notwithstanding the supposed complexity of his 
ideas, we might let his thrice subtle magic work 
its will upon us. 

Mr. James remarks that "there are two kinds 
of taste in the appreciation of imaginative litera- 
ture — the taste for emotions of surprise and the 
taste for emotions of recognition." It is the same 

122 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

with pictorial art. In the case of the other men 
our emotions of recognition are gratified. But 
with Davies it is always the emotion of surprise. 
His imagination plays him pranks; it leads him 
into dangerous spots. This seer of visions, this 
poet who would penetrate the earthly envelope 
and surprise the secret fevers of the soul, dis- 
engage the solemn emotions of subKminal per- 
sonality, evoke magical scenes in a no-man's-land 
with Botticellian figures, primitive seas and hills, 
a sort of pre-Raphaelitic mood disquietingly inter- 
fused by a delicate modern feeling; a neurotic 
strain of ascetic music, with the hills of a celestial 
Florence for a frame and the antique nymphs of 
the brake moving or reclining melodiously — 
into what category may we compress Davies? 
He is obstinately mediaeval, until he carelessly 
brushes in the grandeur of a California forest. 
His women, nympholepts, affect the imagination 
as do the bacchantes of Maurice de Guerin. And 
yet he catches with exquisite tact the virginal 
Unes of a young girl who surely lives not far from 
Central Park. He has the apocalyptic strain in 
him and many of his canvases are darkened by 
symbols. But beauty is always present, else its 
fragrance hinted at. Those fragile, mysterious 
women, haunted by visions of the great god 
Dionysos, or perhaps Pan, where do they come 
from, where are they going? One can ask of 
Davies as did the Centaur of another: "The 
jealous gods have buried somewhere proofs of 
the origins of all things, but upon the shores of 
123 



CERTAIN AMERICAN PAINTERS 

what ocean have they rolled the stone that hides 
them, O Macareus?" Upon the crust of what 
planet have you seen your picture visions, O 
Arthur Davies? 



124 



VI 

MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 



After a performance of Tristan und Isolde, 
March, 1876, at Berlin, the well-known music- 
critic Louis Ehlert registers the remarks of two 
friends who sat on either side of him. The 
younger man exclaimed: "The world holds no 
pleasure after this"; the elder whispered: "A 
few more evenings like this and my strength will 
sink into the grave." These widely diverging 
views of two opposed temperaments, not to con- 
sider as a factor the different ages, might serve 
as a classic example of the attitudes invariably 
struck in the presence of a new work of art. 
Not that old age always faces the past — we 
know that the reverse is often the case — but 
the lack of apprehension or sympathy is usually 
the result of a certain way of seeing or hearing 
things, and it is quite useless to attempt to con- 
vert such people into your manner of thinking. 
Why upset the picture of the world you have so 
laboriously built up simply because an impudent 
nobody comes along and shows you his version, 
the outcome of disordered vision or a desire for 
self-advertisement! Such a thing were impos- 

125 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

sible. The young man of the Ehlert story was 
a Wagnerian lover and later in his life would 
have been the first to hiss the music of Richard 
Strauss. The men to-day who fought so valiantly 
for the impressionistic movement are hurling 
contemptuous epithets at the neo-impressionists 
and the post-impressionists. The younger gen- 
eration bangs at the door, the older fires its 
critical blunderbuss at the intruders from the first 
floor, and no one is wounded, neither is any one 
convinced against his will. The strange part of 
it all is that about every quarter of a century the 
operation is repeated, yet no one learns the les- 
son of the past. Perhaps it is better so, else no 
real progress would be made. After the fat the 
lean, after the feast the famine, after Manet, 
Matisse; after Wagner, Richard Strauss; after 
Flaubert, Zola ; after Zola — the deluge. And 
so will it continue; otherwise artistic stagnation. 
Change and criticism are inevitable if a living 
organism is to be conserved; we do not discuss 
the dead. Therefore let us talk of the post- 
impressionists, a vital issue now in the world of 
art. 

Every law has its hohdays, said the worthy 
Professor Ehlert, and in each new manifestation 
of the artistic spirit the laws that governed the 
arts we first learned seem to be cast aside as use- 
less; we say seem because it is only self-deception 
evoked by the strangeness of the method, the 
inclusion of new material, and the personality of 
the new man. After a time the novelty wears 
126 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

away and intrinsic qualities remain to be judged. 
Ibsen was called an immoralist and a revolution- 
ary dramatist; to-day we know that his work 
and character are all of a piece, sound in art and 
spirit and in the direct Hne of his great dramatic 
forebears. What hasn't Wagner been called, 
Wagner a melodist of Mozartian fecundity if you 
compare him with his successors? And Charles 
Baudelaire, prosecuted for a few poems that no 
one reads nowadays except as a duty or a matter 
of curiosity, what of this rare poet, who actually 
brought fresh subject matter into the formal and 
faded garden of French verse ! We do not speak 
here of the sonorous Victor Hugo, for man can- 
not live by rhetoric alone. Baudelaire treated 
evil as a theme without the sugary sentiment of 
a Coppee or the impassive perfection of the 
Parnassians. Naturally he was misunderstood. 
Manet fought a Kfelong battle with people who 
could not see his artistic descent from Velasquez 
and Goya. Claude Monet, the first and, we are 
tempted to add, the only impressionist, now a 
classic, was a few years ago regarded as a dauber; 
his exquisite tonaHties were smears made by one 
who possessed no craftsmanship. The slanting 
sun of a decrepit civiHzation feebly shone on 
French art, so averred the enemies of impres- 
sionism, though by 1880 the group had won the 
battle, and this same year also proved a marking 
date for the victories of Wagner, and of the 
reaUstic school in fiction, French and Russian. 
In a phrase, the tumescence of the classicists, of 
127 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

the romantics, had set in ; antique stale formulas 
were discarded, and new facets of art, the eternal 
Proteus, were discovered. Paul Gauguin has 
said that in art one is either a plagiarist or a 
revolutionary. He might have added that the 
secret of success in art is excess. 

But does this new art, do these inhuman, nay 
esoteric arabesques represent a veracious mood? 
What becomes of the rainbows and flutes, the 
ivory, apes, and peacocks, the pomegranates 
and persimmons of the past? They can't en- 
dure forever. After Monet? Not Matisse, be- 
cause a strong man intervened, Paul Cezanne; 
and the new movement dates from Cezanne; 
as surely as evolution from Charles Darwin. 
In Hterature the firm prose and lucid lubricity 
of Huysmans revealed to the clairvoyant Zola 
that this descendant of Flemish painters was the 
true realist of the naturalistic school, and not 
Maupassant, who, as George Moore so happily 
put it, absorbed as much of the genius of Flau- 
bert as he could and then proceeded to "cut it 
into numberless walking sticks." And when 
Cezanne was understood he and not Monet be- 
came chief of the school. Why Cezanne? We 
know that naturalism is dead for the present, 
that symbolism has gone the way of all things 
born flawed, yet the younger men are obsessed 
by a mixture of realism and symbohsm that 
almost defies analysis. Through the gates of 
ivory or the gates of horn will you steer your 
bark? Degas and Manet are called "old hat" 
128 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

in Paris; there are no younger men of such vig- 
orous personality and gift of painting as Monet, 
Renoir, Pissarro. Is this the reason that Paul 
Cezanne, who, much as we admire him, is in- 
ferior as a sheer manipulator of paint if com- 
pared to the five men just named, was shoved 
into the place of honour? Or was there some 
fundamental reason why he of all others was 
selected as a starting-point by Gauguin and Van 
Gogh? You may recall his acid criticism of this 
pair and his violent disclaimer that they were 
pupils of his or that they continued his tradition. 
And just here we come across the name of Emile 
Bernard, for it was that painter who recorded 
the utterances of Cezanne after he had visited 
him at Aix in Provence. 

Now Bernard, who is an excellent artist, has 
shocked many by what he calls a refutation of 
impressionising, and if it had been written by 
the late Albert Wolff of the Figaro it couldn't 
have been more destructive, in sentiment at 
least, although as it came from the pen of a 
painter the technical side is dealt with more 
drastically than if it had been composed by the 
shallow, prejudiced, but clever Wolff. Ber- 
nard seeks to demohsh the theory that impres- 
sionism is nature traversed by or viewed through 
a temperament, on the score that nature, not 
the individual, should count; which is very 
modest, but rather weak in metaphysics. He 
finds fault with the colour theories of Chevreul 
and Rood, not as theories, but in their appUca- 
129 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

tion by such artists as Seurat, Signac, Anquetin. 
The science of chromatics has naught to do with 
the practice of art, he contends. He reproaches 
the impressionists for their meagre palette — • 
black being banned, consequently chiaro-oscuro; 
dark shadows do not exist for the pleinairistes. 
And their much vaunted subject matter, modern 
life, what has that led them to? To the ex- 
clusion of the imaginative, the spiritual; to 
baseness, to vulgarity, even as Zola and others 
caricatured Flaubert and brought their readers 
to the dunghill of romanticism, which is natural- 
ism. These impressionistic painters are ughcists ! 
You seem to hear the voice of Kenyon Cox 
preaching in the wilderness of our Academy 
when too many impressionistic canvases are 
hung. No more savoury impasto, no modulation 
of tones, no rich couche of underpainting; in- 
stead, all glaring, direct painting, themes so 
literal as to be meaningless, above all, no emo- 
tional quality. Impressionism then is a feeble 
rOl losing itself in the arid sands of the obvious. 
We quote Emile Bernard, not only because he 
is a backsHder but as an instance of a critic like 
a certain man down South who didn't know the 
Civil War was over. There is no necessity of a 
propaganda for Richard Wagner. He is a classic. 
It is the doings in tone of the other Richard that 
puzzle the critics. Manet, Monet, Renoir are 
all ranged. Cezanne is still a bone of contention, 
for he attempted not only to improve upon the 
technical methods of his contemporaries, the 
130 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

impressionists, but also to give to painting the 
content that it lacked. Mr. Cox and Cezanne 
could have shaken hands on that side of the 
question, but when it comes to Henri Matisse the 
American critic would look another way. What 
though Matisse endeavours to return to the sub- 
ject in art, above all dower the theme with the 
note of intensity! Mr. Cox would probably 
quote Hamlet at him, saying, "Thou com'st in 
such a questionable shape." Yes, it is the shape 
that affrights the conservative, a shape that seeks 
to be more plastic than music and as emotional. 
The waves raised by the first exhibition of the 
post-impressionists at the Grafton Gallery in 
London have not yet subsided, are still reverber- 
ating on distant shores where the local critical 
Canutes stand, measuring tape in hand, crying: 
''Thus far and no further." One of the fruits 
of the discussion is a book entitled The Post- 
Impressionists, by the art writer, Mr. C. Lewis 
Hind, another is the news that Mr. Roger Fry, 
also an expert, who knows a Mantegna from a 
Matisse, or a hawk from a handsaw, has suc- 
cumbed to the malady and exhibited in Lon- 
don, so it is said, a roomful of horrors, staring 
doll-like nudes, queer landscapes in which the 
perspective falls away as if the earth were sink- 
ing, the colours of which are poisonous greens 
or jaundiced yellows. We quote from various 
amiable EngHsh sources. Mr. Fry was formerly 
a painter of delicate water-colours. Why this 
defection from the revered standards of beauty? 

131 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

In his interesting monograph Mr. Hind tells us 
in his agreeable style why — not specifically of 
Mr. Fry, but of the ideals of the movement gen- 
erally. Let us examine more closely this latest 
bubble on the turbulent stream of early twen- 
tieth-century art. 

There is no absolute in beauty; expression, 
not beauty, is the aim of art. All the rest is 
mere illustration. Beauty is relative. It is 
topographical, nay parochial. The beauty of 
Chinese art is not the same beauty that informs 
Occidental art. When the Wagnerian music was 
first heard it gave much pain to people whose 
aural organs had been soothed by the charming 
music of Mendelssohn. But Wagner didn't care, 
for he couldn't use the saccharine Mendelssohn 
palette to paint the full-length portraits of the 
brutal Hunding, the acrid Alberich, or of the in- 
comparable Briinnhilde. Nietzsche has pointed 
out that our present system of morality may 
dangerously approach immorahty if practised at 
the antipodes. Cezanne felt that the melliflu- 
ous, shimmering tones of the poetic pantheist 
Claude Monet would not serve to express his 
sober, solid picture of a section of the universe 
(and how modest he was, for his universe, his 
Motive, was a sKce of a hill near his home) . Paul 
Gauguin, sickening of the ninety times nine 
thousand times represented life of Paris and the 
provinces, fled to the South Sea Islands and 
there lived the existence of a glorified beach- 
comber. But he formed for himself a fresh syn- 
132 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

thesis, painted extraordinary sights, painted mas- 
sive decorations in which ecstasy lives. Van 
Gogh, the genius of this ill-assorted new trinity 
of paint-gods, went the way of those who live too 
intensely. To understand him fully one must 
study Ricciotto Canudo's Les Liberes, in which 
the madman is revealed, not as a sick being, but 
as one overflowing with so much health that the 
brain and body crumble in the fierce confla- 
gration — a refreshing variation of Nordau's de- 
generation theme. Vincent Van Gogh hovered 
on the borderland of madness and genius. But 
he was the best-equipped of the three in the gifts 
of painter and visionary. From these men stem 
Matisse and the new crowd. Away with all the 
old stock attitudes and gestures; a new syn- 
thesis, an immobihty Asiatic in its hieratic im- 
mobihty, a different mosaic of tones, are their 
watchwords, 

Mr. Hind prefers expressionism as a term to 
define the ideal of the movement rather than the 
clumsy compound post-impressionism. To ex- 
press an idea emotionally in a medium of only 
two dimensions is not easy. Is it possible? The 
Sistine Chapel arouses the sensation of awe in the 
mind of the spectator. Raphael fills us with a 
calm joy. Diirer puzzles as well as stirs, and Da 
Vinci is wholly beautiful, with the threefold 
beauties of colour, form, and suggestion. What, 
then, are these crazy new chaps after? Isn't 
the vision of their grandfathers good enough? 
Evidently they think not; yet wrestle as they 

^33 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

do to extort novel ideas, their art recalls some 
art that has pre-existed, and lying dormant 
for centuries has gained a new dynamic force. 
Behold Assyria and Eg>'pt in Pablo Picasso's 
work. The cubists or geometricians, or what 
not — how they love new names for old things 
— are not precisely novel. Despite Edwin 
Bjorkman to the contrary, there is no new thing 
under the sun, not even his assertion. Let us 
not pale before the ugly manifestations of young 
France. They may be gods, after all, as Baude- 
laire said when somebody in his presence at- 
tacked strange idols. But with so many other 
practitioners of this school the cleavage between 
idea and image is appalHng. 

It has been said that you may not have seen a 
man or woman or landscape such as Cezanne 
shows in his canvases, but after seeing them you 
can never forget them, for you will see them 
again in life. Who before Corot showed us a 
landscape like this? You need not go to Ville 
d'Avray to see such. It is the individual vision 
of the artist that teaches anew the innocence of 
our eye. Consider the school of English face 
painters — can they stand the test of criticism, 
the sort of criticism you apply to Rembrandt, 
Hals, Velasquez, Titian, Raphael (the portrait- 
ist), or Manet? For more than one modern 
critic the colour of Reynolds, Hoppner, Law- 
rence, Romney — not Raeburn — is a mere 
shining poultice, as glistening and insincere as 
what a German writer calls "snail slime with 

134 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

raspberry sauce" C'Schneckenschleim mit Him- 
beer sauce"). As to form, how weak the hne 
and what conventional simpHfications, above all 
what insipid prettifications. This iconoclastic 
criticism is not rare. And can our painters go 
on for ever imitating the Barbizon school, so 
called, or for that matter the impressionists of 
1880? But the new wine is very heady for young 
folk, a sort of epileptic cider; isn't all cham- 
pagne epileptic cider? Yet after the giddiness, 
the intoxication, the morning headaches have 
vanished there may be a residue of art remaining. 
Matisse has been much abused. We confess a 
weakness for his drawings, as we do for the 
drawings of Rodin, of Augustus John, of Davies. 
Frank J. Mather, Jr., than whom we recognise 
no more competent critic to deal with this thrill- 
ing theme, asserted that the Une of Matisse re- 
minded him of the line of Antonio Pollaiuolo, 
which statement is rather a startling one com- 
ing from the distinguished Marquand professor 
of Princeton, who cannot be accused of an un- 
due Hking for latter-day movements in art. Un- 
fortunately sterile eccentricities mar the painted 
work of Matisse. 

What is post-impressionism? What is this cruel 
alchemy that deforms the supple curves of the 
human figure into images both hideous and ter- 
rifying? Into what backward abysm are we being 
led? Mr. Hind does not altogether succeed in 
answering the somewhat illusive question. We 
only know that, weary of the externalism of the 

^55 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

impressionists, a new group began experiment- 
ing and broke the old linear mould, altered the 
old colour schemes. To each man his own vision, 
and except a certain sincerity there is not much 
sameness in the technical procedures of Ce- 
zanne or Gauguin or Van Gogh or Matisse. The 
imitators need not be discussed; epigones always 
exaggerate. What do we care, for example, for 
a Kees Van Dongen and his paradoxes in paint? 
But if post-impressionism means the work of 
Davies or Augustus John or the line of Matisse, 
then we are behevers in post-impressionism. No 
matter the strangeness of image, the eternal emo- 
tion of the cosmos must sing, else it is no art. Let 
us be cathoHc, let us be open-minded. Depend 
upon it, if these artists paint as they do they 
do so for sufficient reasons. Hanslick once wrote 
"not the opera, but the public was a failure." 
For many years it was the pubUc that failed, 
not Tristan und Isolde; for a long time Manet 
was accused of deforming the ideal of beauty 
(meaning of course the academic Lefebvre, 
Bouguereau & Co.). Eyes there were too few 
to appreciate his genius. Rhythmic intensity is 
the key to the new school; hne, not colour, is 
king. Not beauty, but, as Rodin said, character, 
chara<:ter is the aim of the new art. 



136 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

II 

THE MATISSE DRAWINGS 

The second batch of Matisse drawings were 
fascinating; where his followers plod panting 
miles behind, he leaps the stiffest barriers by 
reason of his sheer virtuosity. His real friends 
(not the sort who moan in ecstasy over his new 
monkeyshines) and critics have noted, not with- 
out regret, that the Master (he has attained the 
dignity of capitahsation) is given to the bootless 
task of shocking the bourgeois. Poor old bour- 
geois; how they have been shocked from the 
Hernani days of Theophile Gautier to the ma- 
cabre merry-making of Huysmans and the fumi- 
sterie of Paul Gauguin! And the young fellows 
are still at it. Who hasn't contributed his share, 
if his boyhood were worthy the name? The small 
boy snow-balling the fat teacher is as much 
a symbol of the revolt of youth against sleek 
authority as is an Emma Goldman lecture on 
Ibsen for the instruction of our police. But why 
Matisse? Here is a chap whose talent is dis- 
tinguished. He can make his pencil or brush 
sing at the bidding of his brain; better still, that 
brain is fed by eyes which refuse to see humanity 
or landscape in the conventional terms of the 
school. He wishes not only to astonish worthy 
folk but also to charm their cheque books. Paris 
is always the prey of the dernier cri, and Matisse, 
unless he has been ousted during the last month, 

137 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

is not only the latest cry but, we hope, the 
ultimate scream. At his worst he shocks; at his 
best his art is as attractive as an art can be that 
reveals while it dazzles, makes captive when it 
consoles. 

The two dozen and more sketches on the walls 
of Mr. Stieglitz's gallery were of a range and in- 
tensity that set tingling the pulse of any honest 
craftsman. It is not alone the elliptical route 
pursued by Matisse in his desire to escape the 
obvious and suppress the inutile, but the crea- 
tive force of his sinuous emotional line. It is a 
richly fed line, bounding, but not wiry, as is 
Blake's. Its power of evoking tactile sensations 
is as vigorous, rhythmic, and subtle as the or- 
chestration of Richard Strauss. Little wonder 
collectors in Paris are buying Matisse just be- 
cause of his emotional suggestiveness. There is 
a sketch in the middle of the east wall before 
which William Blake would have paused and 
wondered. It is worthy of Blake, or it might 
have been signed, despite its casual air, by one 
of the early Italian masters. Orphic or Bacchic, 
we can't say which, these tiny figures hold their 
own in a composition simple to bareness, each 
endowed with an ecstatic individual life. In the 
right foreground, as seen by the spectator, a 
woman lies on the ground, a man sits hunched 
up near by. The pair, without the remotest hint 
of the conventional erotic, tell more in a few 
lines than could a volume. Only Rodin has 
compassed such, though his is the stenographic 

138 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

method of the sculptor, not of the painter, es- 
pecially of a painter whose colour is so bewilder- 
ingly opulent as that of Matisse. 

After all, nature is a dictionary; the artist goes 
to her for words, not to copy; he must phrase in 
his own personal way if he expects to achieve 
originality. With the exceptions of Whistler 
and Cezanne no one has studied the patterns of 
the East as Matisse. He always sees the dec- 
oration and makes you see it, unless you are 
blinded by the memory of some other man's line. 
There is no monopoly in the conventional, and 
because thousands of painters have envisaged 
the nude in a certain — and usually the same — 
monotonous fashion, that should not attenuate 
our agreement with the vision of Matisse. His 
knowledge is great, his simplicity greater. Such 
problems as are set forth and mastered in that 
woman — we only see her back — who has 
thrown herself forward in sheer weariness must 
extort a tribute of admiration from any fair- 
minded lover of art. Another woman places one 
arm over the other close at the wrists. A series 
of dehcate muscular acts are involved. Im- 
mobihty is the result, but even when the body is 
at rest the muscles are never quite still. The 
rich interplay of flexor and extensor in the 
muscles of the Matisse models delights and ap- 
pals. Who has ever dared before to push so 
far, dared to annex territory that is supposed to 
belong to the anatomist proper? Yet no sus- 
picion of the anatomy lesson is conveyed in these 

139 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

singularly aKve nudes. Matisse is dominated by 
an idea, but it is not a didactic idea. His colour 
sense is profound. Fancy black and white still- 
life that brings to you the jewelled sensation of 
fruit and flowers! Patterns, whether Persian or 
Japanese, are to be detected in his landscape bits 
and still-life. And what mastery in spacing. 
Far back his art is rooted in Manet and Cezanne; 
the abridgments of the one and the sense of 
structural bulk and weight of the other, with 
much of his harmonic sense, are suggested in both 
the portraits and the flower pieces; yet you feel 
the subtle pull of the East throughout all. Some 
of his creatures are not presentable in academic 
studios, but you forget their pose and pessi- 
mism and the hollow pits that serve for their fero- 
cious eyes in the truth and magic of their con- 
tours. One woman with balloon hips is almost 
a caricature until you discover the repetitions 
of curves in sky, bodily structure, and earth. In 
a word, an amazing artist, original in observation 
and a scorner of the facile line, the line called 
graceful, sweet, genteel; worse yet, moral. Men 
like Matisse and Richard Strauss do good in 
stirring the stale swamp of respectability, not- 
withstanding the violence of their methods. 
Otherwise art would become, does become, a 
frozen symbol. These barbarous natures bring 
with them fresh rhythms — and then they too 
succumb to the love of the sensational; they 
too, more's the pity, cultivate their hysteria, fol- 
lowing the evil advice of Charles Baudelaire, and 
140 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

finally become locked in the relentless grip of 
their own limitations. All things pass and perish 
and in a dozen years children may be taken to 
special matinees of Elektra, there to be amused, 
as they are amused to-day, by the antics of the 
animals and monsters in Wagner's Ring, and the 
Matisse drawings may be used for the instruc- 
tion of maidenly beginners. Who knows! This 
exhibition was more instructive and moving than 
a century of academy shows. 



Ill 
PABLO PICASSO 

A dozen years or more ago Pablo Picasso 
arrived in Paris, having an excellent equipment 
with which to conquer the world artistic. He 
was a superior draughtsman, a born colourist, 
a passionate harmonist; he incarnated in his 
production the temperament of his Iberian race. 
Mr. Stieglitz has shown us at the galleries of the 
Photo-Secession a few drawings of that period; 
they are supple, alert, savant, above all charged 
with vitality. Then the spirit of Henri Matisse 
moved across the waters of his imagination, as 
did that of Debussy in the misty wild regions 
of Ravel and Dukas. To-day Picasso has sur- 
passed his master in hardihood, as Matisse left 
lagging both Gauguin and Cezanne, St. Paul 
the Minor and St. Paul the Major, in the rear. 
When exhibiting in the Galerie Volard, Paris, 
141 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

critical commentary made one gasp; he is either 
a satyr or a Hyperion ; there is no middle point 
in the chorus of execration and exaltation. We 
believe this is wrong and makes for critical 
confusion. 

In an illuminating address Mr. W. C. Brownell 
remarked that "every important piece of Htera- 
ture, as every important work of plastic art, is 
the expression of a personality, and it is not the 
material of it but the mind behind it that invites 
critical interpretation." Precisely so, though we 
do not believe that either to the reason or to the 
imagination of this distinguished critic the pi- 
oneer Picasso would make much of an appeal. 
And even this opinion we put forth diffidently, 
remembering that when the name of Rodin was 
still anathema Mr. Brownell had written almost 
a book about the sculptor. Picasso is miles away 
from Rodin, yet he is striving for a new method 
of expression, one that will show us his new 
vision of the powers and principahties of the 
earth. (At present Satan is chanting the chief 
role in his composition.) It's anarchic, certainly; 
that's why we tolerate it despite its appalling 
ugliness; anything is better than the parrot-like 
repetitions of the academic. 

What is meant by the new "vision"? Why 
shouldn't the vision that pleased our great- 
grandfather content his great-grandchildren? 
You must go to Stendhal for an answer. Because 
each generation, whether for better or worse, 
sees the world anew, or thinks it does; at least 
142 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

it is "different" in the Stendhalian sense. For a 
keener definition let us quote D. S. MacColl: 
"This new vision that has been growing up 
among the landscape painters simplifies as well 
as complicates the old. For purposes of analysis 
it sees the world as a mosaic of patches of colour, 
such and such a hue of such and such a tone of 
such and such a shape. The old vision had 
beaten out three separate acts, the determination 
of the edges and limits of things, the shading and 
modelHng of the spaces in between with black 
and white, and the tinting of those spaces with 
their local colour. The new analysis looked first 
for colour and for a different colour in each patch 
of shade or light. The old painting followed the 
old vision by its three processes of drawing the 
contours, modelling the chiaro-oscuro in dead 
colour, and finally colouring this white and black 
preparation. The new analysis left the contours 
to be determined by the junction, more or less 
fused, of the colour patches, instead of rigidly 
defining them as they are known to be defined 
when seen near at hand or felt. Its precepts were 
to recover the innocence of the eye, to forget the 
thing as an object with its shapes and colours as 
they are known to exist under other aspects, to 
follow the fact of vision, however surprising, 
recognise that contours are lost and found, that 
local colour in light and shade becomes different 
not only in tone but also in hue. And painting 
tended to follow this new vision by substituting 
one process for three; the painter matched the 

143 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

hue and tone at once of each patch, and shaped a 
patch on the canvas of the corresponding shape, 
ceasing to think in lines except as the boundaries 
by which these patches Umit one another." 
Elsewhere Mr. MacColl asserts that the true his- 
tory of man would be the history of his imagina- 
tion. It would prove, we think, a more stupen- 
dous undertaking than Lord Acton's projected 
history of ideas. 

For over a quarter of a century the impres- 
sionists did cease to think in Hnes and modelled 
in patches, but curiously enough the return to 
the academic, so called, was led by the least 
academic of painters, Paul Cezanne. Strictly 
speaking, he was not a genius, though a far better 
painter than his misguided follower (Cezanne's 
own words) Gauguin, who, despite his strong dec- 
orative talent, never learned how to handle paint 
as a master. Cezanne was for returning to the 
much neglected form. "Don't make Chinese 
images Hke Gauguin," he cried ; "all nature must 
be modelled after the sphere, cone, and cyhnder. 
As for the colours, the more the colours harmo- 
nise the more the design becomes precise." Ce- 
zanne is the father of the post-impressionists, 
and it is a mistake to suppose that they are 
impressionists with the "new vision" so clearly 
described above by MacColl. They have gone 
on and consider the division-of-tones men, Monet 
included, as old-fashioned as Gerome and Bou- 
guereau. And as extremes meet, the contem- 
porary crowd are primitives, who have a word of 
144 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

praise for Ingres but a hatred of Delacroix. 
They also loathe Courbet and call the first im- 
pressionism mere materiaHsm. To spirituaHse 
or make more emotional the line, to be personal 
and not the follower of formulas — ah, mirage 
of each succeeding artistic generation ! — are the 
main ideas of this school, which abhors the clas- 
sic, romantic, impressionistic schools. It has one 
painter of great distinction, Henri Matisse; from 
him a mob of disciples have emanated. Among 
the Americans are Weber, Maurer, Marsden 
Hartley, John Marin, and others. 

Picasso is also one, but a disciple who has 
thrown ofif the influence of the master. He goes 
his own way, which is the geometrical. He sees 
the world and mankind in cubes or pyramids. 
His ideal form is pyramidal. There is the 
back of a giantess corseted. Her torso is power- 
fully modelled; no dim hint of indecision here. 
The lines are pyramidal. Power is in them. 
Obsessed by the Egyptians, Picasso has desert- 
ed his earlier linear suavity for a hieratic 
rigidity, which nevertheless does not altogether 
cut off emotional expressiveness. There are at- 
titudes and gestures that register profound feel- 
ing, grotesque as may be the outer envelope. 
He gives us his emotion in studying a figure. 
And remember this is a trained artist who has 
dropped the entire baggage of a lifetime's study 
to follow his beckoning star. To set it all down 
to a desire to stir up philistia would be to classify 
Picasso as a madman, for there are easier routes 

145 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

to the blazing land of reclame than the particu- 
larly thorny and ugly one he has chosen. There 
is method in his wildest performances, method 
and at times achievement even to the uninitiated 
eye. His is not the cult of the ugly for the sake 
of ugliness, but the search after the expressive in 
the heart of ugliness. A new aesthetic? No, a 
very old one revivified, and perhaps because of 
its modern rebirth all the uglier, and as yet a 
mere diabolic, not divine, stammering. 

The best, or worst, of Picasso was not at this 
little exposition. Our objection to it and to 
others of its kind (though we are grateful to 
Mr. Stieglitz for his unselfish impresarioship in 
these affairs) is that such drawing and painting are 
only for a few artists. It is all very well to say 
that the public will learn later to appreciate ; we 
doubt it. It either gasps or mocks; sympathy 
it seldom develops. To a vision like Picasso's 
the external of the human form is only a rind to 
be peeled away. At times he is an anatomist, 
not an analyst; the ugly asymmetry of the 
human body is pitilessly revealed, but as a rule 
he abstracts the shell and seeks to give shape and 
expression to his vision. Alas, nearly always do 
we shudder or else smile! Those inanimate 
blocks, kindergarten idols of wood and bronze, 
what do they mean? You dream of immemorial 
Asiatic monsters and also of the verses of Emile 
Verhaeren: "The desert of my soul is peopled 
with black gods, huge blocks of wood"; or of 
Baudelaire's spleen and ideal beauty: "Je hais 
146 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

le mouvement qui deplace les lignes; et jamais 
je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris." Benjamin De 
Casseres in his brilliant summary of the poetry 
of Leconte de Lisle shows us the genius of im- 
mobility, and his description would fit Gustave 
Moreau's picture as well: "When he walked he 
left abysses behind him. Where his eye fell 
objects relapsed into rigidity. There is no mo- 
tion in his images. The universe is static, all 
things are turned marble. Motion is spent. 
. . . Silence, impassivity, sterility, trance, in a 
few magical strokes the universe of living things, 
is caught in the sin of motion — vibration is 
seized flagrante delicto — and stiffened in its 
multicoloured shrouds. The organic and inor- 
ganic worlds have stopped at high tide, turned 
to adamant as at the sudden vision of some 
stupendous revelation." 

Will Pablo Picasso restore form to its sover- 
eignty in modern art? His art is not significant, 
yet with all its deformations, its simpHfications, 
the breath of Hfe does traverse the design; as 
for his colour we must imagine what it was for- 
merly, as Mark Twain's German musical public 
loyally recalled the long-time dead voice of their 
favourite tenor. One Parisian critic accused 
Picasso of painting the portraits of anthropoid 
apes that had been inoculated by M. Metch- 
nikoff. Gracious Apollo! Is this irony? To 
paint a counterfeit of a monkey, sick or other- 
wise, is sound art, isn't it? 



147 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

IV 

TEN YEARS LATER 

I 

Ten years ago I was present at the first var- 
nishing day of the Autumn Salon in the Grand 
Palais des Champs-Elysees, and last fall (191 2) 
I attended the tenth exhibition of all these young 
and mature Independents, Cubists, Futurists, 
Post-Impressionists, and other wild animals from 
the remotest jungles of Darkest Art, and I was 
able to estimate the progress made since the first 
function. Great has been the change. Whereas 
a decade ago the god of that time was Paul 
Cezanne, to-day there are a dozen rival claim- 
ants for the job, vying with one another in every 
form of extravagance, so as to catch the eye. 
Manet, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Sisley were in 
the eyes of his admirers dethroned ten years ago 
by Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh; 
now it's Matisse, Picasso, Picabia, Van Dongen, 
to mention a few, who look upon the trio of 
Post-Impressionists as "old masters," and, to 
tell the truth, seem masters in comparison with 
the new crowd who have contemptuously pitched 
overboard everything that we oldsters consider 
as essentials in pictorial or plastic art. 

Will they, too, be voted "played out" ten 
years hence? Is there a still profounder level of 
ugliness and repulsiveness and idiotic trickery, 
or has the lowest been reached? 
148 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

To answer these questions one must not re- 
sort to the old argument as does a writer in the 
catalogue of the Autumn Salon, pointing out 
that Manet, Wagner, Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Rodin 
were voted incomprehensible. That is too easy. 
Even in the depths of uncritical ignorance there 
were gleams of sympathy for the above-men- 
tioned men. And in all the ruck and welter of 
the new movements there are a few men whose 
work will stand the test of time, and to-day shows 
mastery, originality, obscured as it may be by 
wilful eccentricities and occasional posturing to 
the gallery — a gallery, be it understood, com- 
posed of the gay young dogs who yawp in paint 
and screech themselves hoarse whenever a col- 
league cuts up infernal didoes. One of the "new " 
men I think will come to something is Henri 
Matisse. 

I am not a prophet, though I listen to proph- 
ets. I met one ten years ago who had marched 
to the front with Edouard Manet, but has de- 
clined to go any further in the company of Paul 
Cezanne. For him the art of Cezanne was a 
distinct retrogression, and, recalling the stern 
admonition of Charles Baudelaire — truly a 
clairvoyant critic — who had warned Manet that 
he was the last of his line, en plein decadence, my 
painter friend pointed out to me that the camp 
followers of Cezanne, the sans-culottes of art, 
the ragtag and bobtail regiment would end by 
disintegrating the elements of art, all beauty, 
nobility, line, colour, would be sacrificed to a 
149 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

search for "truth," "decoration," and the "char- 
acteristic," said qualities being a new name for 
ugliness, ignorance, vulgarity. 

"They want to do in a year what Cezanne 
couldn't accomplish in a lifetime," wailed my 
friend. "They are too lazy to master the gram- 
mar of their art, and they take Cezanne as a 
model, forgetting that he, like Manet, had dili- 
gently practised his scales for years before he 
began to play on canvas." And Henri Matisse? 
I asked. Well, perhaps Matisse was a "talent," 
but he had received a very sound education, and 
knew what he was about. If he chose to pitch 
his palette over the moon he must abide by the 
consequences. So Matisse, despite his fumis- 
terie, is admitted on all sides as worth while, 
though he is bitterly attacked for his volcanic 
outbursts and general deviations from the nor- 
mal. But you can always tell a human j5gure 
of his from a cow, and the same can't be said of 
the extraordinary productions of Picasso or 
Picabia. 

The catalogue of the Tenth Autumn Salon 
shows the astonishing number of one thousand 
seven hundred and seventy works, which does not 
include the two hundred and twenty-one in the 
retrospective portrait exhibition, or several other 
minor exhibitions. Out of this formidable num- 
ber there are few masterpieces, much sterile pos- 
ing in paint, any quantity of mediocre talent, 
and in several salles devoted to the Cubists and 
others of the ilk any amount of mystification, 

150 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

charlatanry, and an occasional glimpse of in- 
dividuality. I am in sympathy with revolution- 
ary movements in art, but now I know that my 
sympathies have reached their outermost verge. 
I confess that I can't unravel the meanings of 
the Cubists, though I catch here and there a hint 
of their decorative quality, while shuddering at 
the hideous tonalities — strictly speaking, there 
are no tonalities, only blocks of raw primary 
colour juxtaposed with the childHke ingenuous- 
ness of Assyrian mural decorations. Massive as 
is Matisse in his wall painting, he sets up no 
puerile riddles to be demolished by the critic. 
New formulas these young men have not in- 
vented. To recapture the "innocence of the 
eyes" they have naively gone back to the Greek 
frieze, to the figures on Greek vases, to Egyp- 
tian tombs, to archaic bass-reliefs; they are des- 
perate in their desire for the archaic. Picasso 
proudly asserted the other day that there are 
"no feet in nature," and some of his nudes seem 
to bear out this statement. Not to be natural, 
that is the new law. Not to represent, but 
interpret; not to show us the tangible, but the 
abstract. New mathematicians, seekers after a 
third dimension in paints, these young men must 
not be all set down as fakers. They are dehber- 
ately flouting the old conventions and missing 
thick butter on their daily bread. Sincere some 
of them are, apart from the usual wish, so dear 
to the budding students, of startling the bour- 
geois. And this same bourgeois goes to the ex- 

151 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

hibition and holds his sides with laughter, never 
buys a canvas, and disports himself generally as 
did his father before the pictures of Manet. 
Meanwhile some art dealers are sitting up and 
taking notice. 

Such accomplished artists as Desvallieres, 
D'Espagnat, Mme. Marval, Flandrin, Bonnard, 
Villeon, Frantz Jourdain, Dezire, Picart-Ledoux, 
Albert Andre, Mile. Charmy, Lucien Stoltz, 
VaUoton, Maufra, Maxime Dethomas, and others 
do much to redeem the weariness aroused by the 
contemplation of the Cubist section, the galleries 
set aside for the "Searchers," as they are called. 
What of that terrifying Woman in Blue! What 
of Mountaineers Attacked by Bears! Matisse 
is not at his best, though his work is compara- 
tively clearer than last year. Those three flame- 
coloured nudes dancing against a blue back- 
ground are very rhythmic. They bring into re- 
lief a red bottle entwined with nasturtium leaves 
and flowers. A pail of blue water in which swim 
goldfish is decorative. However, I was slightly 
disappointed in this slim showing, only to be con- 
soled later in London. Mme. Georgette Agutte 
presents a remarkable Japanese interior, very 
effective in both colour and composition. At- 
tractive are the plaster heads of Rene Carriere, 
who models the head of his mother with the 
same divining touch which his father manifested 
in his famous portraits of his wife. 



152 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

II 

The Post-Impressionist Exhibition at the 
Grafton Galleries last October in London was the 
second. There are British, French, and Russian 
groups. Two years ago the first show of the so- 
called Post-Impressionists — unhappy title ! — 
scandahsed and amused all London. Clive Bell 
says in the catalogue that the battle has been 
won, and to-day Cezanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh 
are the "old masters" of the new movement. 
Roger Fry, well known to New York as art 
critic, was in charge and he told us that the idea 
of the present exhibition is to show Post-Im- 
pressionism in its contemporary development not 
only in France, its native place, but in England, 
where it is of very recent growth, and in Russia, 
where it has liberated and revived an old native 
tradition. 

"It would, of course," continues Mr. Fry, 
"have been possible to extend the geographi- 
cal area immensely. Post-Impressionist schools 
are flourishing in Switzerland, Austro-Hungary, 
and most of all in Germany. In Italy, the Futur- 
ists have succeeded in developing a whole system 
of aesthetics out of a misapprehension of some of 
Picasso's recondite and difficult works. We 
have ceased to ask: 'What does this picture 
represent?' and ask instead: 'What does it 
make us feel? ' We expect a work of plastic art 
to have more in common with a piece of music 
than with a coloured photograph. These Eng- 

153 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

lish artists are of the movement because in choice 
of subjects they recognise no authority but the 
truth that is in them; in choice of form, none 
but the need of expressing it. That is Post-Im- 
pressionism." 

But in practice the English Cubists and Post- 
Impressionists do not bear out his hopeful words. 
A Mother and Child, by Wyndham Lewis, may 
be at once a "simphfication," but its plasticity 
of design is far to seek. With The Dead Mole, 
by Etchells, it shares honours in the domain of 
the grotesque. A large wooden doll holding in 
its wooden-painted arms a wooden baby, to 
which this wooden mother is giving ligneous 
nourishment from a wooden bust, is as "emo- 
tional" as a basket of chips. As for The Dead 
Mole, it will be a joy for ever. It is so comical 
that all notion of an artistic formula is forgotten 
in what Henry James would call " the emotion of 
recognition." The looker-on recognises the ab- 
solute imbecility of the design and smiles accord- 
ingly. 

Symbolists would be a better title for Matisse 
and his fellow-artists than the meaningless phrase 
Post-Impressionism, for, despite Mr. Fry's behef 
that they aim at reality rather than illusion, they 
are essentially symbolists, and, like the Chinese, 
by a purely arbitrary line seek to express their 
idea of decoration. I once described music as a 
species of "emotional mathematics," and Mr. 
Fry's "visual music" is but emotional geome- 
trising. At the best, in the hands of a big man 

154 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

such experimenting is a dangerous thing; when 
employed as a working formula by lesser artists, 
such as Derani, Braque, Herbin, Marchand, 
L'Hote, Doucet, and others, the results do not 
justify the means. Even Mr. Fry in his land- 
scapes does not go too far; they wear a gentle 
air of the Italian Primitives. The portrait of his 
wife by Picasso did not shock me, for only the 
day before I had seen hanging in the National 
Gallery a head by Piero della Francesca, pure 
gold against a hard terra-cotta background. 
The colour contrasts of the new men, while harsh 
as to modulation, do not offend the eye nearly 
so much as do those involved mosaics by the 
Cubists. What does Braque mean by his Ku- 
belik-Mozart picture? Or Picasso by his Buffalo 
Bill? The Woman and the Mustard Pot is 
emotional enough, for the unhappy creature is 
weeping, no doubt, because of the mustard in her 
eyes; certainly because of the mustard smeared 
over her dress. A pungent design, indeed. 

Matisse is at his best — also at his most ter- 
rific. One nude sits on a chair drying herself 
with a bath-towel. You look another way. 
Degas at his frankest never revealed so much. 
Nothing occult here. All plain sailing for the 
man in the street. Presently you cover your 
eyes with your hand; then you peer through 
your fingers. All is bald. The Eternal Female, 
and at her ugliest. What's the symbol? There 
is none, only volume and planes. Matisse 
models in paint. But you catch a glimpse of his 

155 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

Dancers — a design for a decoration in the Palace 
of Prince Tschonkine at Moscow — and you 
admire the bacchantic rhythm, the pattern of 
rose, black, blue, the scheme of contrasted 
colour, the boldness, the vivacity of the design. 
It is wonderfully rhythmic, this arabesque. 

There is strong modelHng in his La Coiffeuse; 
indeed, it is impossible to deny the power of this 
painter or deny his marked individuaHty. His 
designs (there are several in the MetropoHtan 
Museum) reveal his creative rhythms, and if, as 
has been said, genius is mainly a matter of energy, 
then Henri Matisse is a genius. But, alas! your 
eye ahghts upon that grotesque Conversation, 
and you murmur: "No, not a matter of energy 
but pajamas." Again the risible rib is tickled. 
Picasso's Nature Morte is dead, not still Hfe. 
His master, Cezanne, knew how to portray po- 
tatoes and onions which were real if not pre- 
cisely emotional. Two pictures are by Auguste 
Chabaud, a young Paris painter who lives all the 
year in the country. 

His exhibition at Paris last spring won for him 
attention and praise. His design is large, simple, 
virile; his sincere feeling for landscape is not to 
be doubted, though his colouring is rather som- 
bre. A road scene in the hills, with its firm sil- 
houette, and his sheep leaving the fold after the 
rain, is rhythmic, especially the figures of the 
shepherd and his dog. At first I fancied the 
sheep were moles, then tapirs, then cockroaches, 
but they soon resolved themselves into sheep. 

156 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

Chabaud is not given over to paint metaphysics. 
He writes, it is true, but he writes sensibly. In 
art, he says, we invent nothing. Art is not of 
yesterday, nor of to-day, nor of to-morrow; it 
is eternal. He mocks at the words classic, ro- 
mantic, ancient, modern. Some of the new 
crowd might pattern after his wisdom. The 
Russians give us Byzantine figures in hieratic 
attitudes. They are monotonous. And in the 
octagon room are four Cezannes, a painter who, 
with all his departures from tradition, neverthe- 
less respected the integrity of his design, re- 
spected his surfaces, was reverent in the use of 
his medium. Cezanne is a classic. It is diffi- 
cult to predict if even Henri Matisse will be- 
come one. 

V 

LITHOGRAPHS OF TOULOUSE-LAUTREC 

A human ass — and his tribe does not decrease 
— once made the profound remark that he never 
read Dickens because so many common people 
circulated through the pages of his novels. We 
call this remark profound, for it illustrates in 
the clearest manner what has been named "the 
heresy of the subject." The majority of per- 
sons do not go to the theatre for the sheer joy of 
the acting, do not read books because they are 
well written, or look at pictures because they are 
painted artistically. The subject, the story, the 
anecdote, the "human interest," "little touches," 

157 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

all the various traps that snare the attention from 
poor or mediocre workmanship — the traps of 
sentimentalism, of false feeling, of cheap pathos, 
and of the cheap moral, these the greater public 
willingly embraces, and hates to be reminded of 
its lack of taste, of its ignorance. The man who 
first said " Give the people what they want" was 
probably born close to the tertiary epoch, though 
his fossil remains as yet undug; but we are as- 
sured that he was a mighty chief in his tribe. So 
are his successors, who have cluttered the 
market-places with their booths, mischievous 
half art and tubs of tripe and soft soap. There- 
fore we select for his courage the snobbish chap 
who found Dickens ordinary; to him Millet 
would have been absolutely vulgar. 

The cult of the subject is warmly worshipped 
in America and England. It nearly ruined 
English painting half a century ago, and even 
to-day you must go to the Glasgow or the Dublin 
galleries to see contemporaneous art naked and 
unashamed. In New York we are more lucky, 
though here the public, always prudish, prefers 
the soapy surfaces of Cabanel's Venus or the 
oily skin of Henner to the forthright beauty 
and truth of Manet's Olympe — now known as 
Notre Dame du Louvre. If Dickens had made 
his "low" characters after the style of Itahan 
opera peasants ; if Manet had prettified his nudes, 
censors would have called them blest. We have 
selected these names at random; Dickens is the 
idol of the middle class (the phrase is not of our 

158 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

making), while Manet fought for recognition in 
a Paris not too easily startled. In reahty he was 
a puritan in comparison with his predecessors 
and successors, not to mention such contempo- 
raries as Gerome, Boulanger, Cabanel, and Le- 
febvre, men who painted nudes their Hfe long. 
But they knew how to mix saccharine on their 
palettes; Manet did not. 

But what would our friend the snob say if he 
had seen the original Hthographs of the ill-fated 
Count Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec? Either faint 
or fight; no middle course in the presence of 
these rapid snap-shots from life by a master of 
line. The subjects would be revolting to our 
possible case, and no doubt they will prove re- 
volting to most people who mix up art with their 
personal preferences for the stale, the sweet, the 
musk moral. Lautrec's favourite browsing 
ground was Montmartre, the Montmartre of 
twenty years ago, not the machine-made tour- 
ists' fake of to-day. You will get a prose parallel 
in the early stories of Huysmans in Les Soeurs 
Vatard, though not in the tinselled glory of 
Charpentier's Louise. Lautrec, born in an old 
family, was literally slain by his desire for artis- 
tic perfection. Montmartre slew him. But he 
mastered the secrets of its dance-halls, its pur- 
lieus, its cocottes, its bullies and habitues before 
he died. In Meier-graefe's little book on the im- 
pressionists Lautrec gets a place of honour, the 
critic asserting that he "dared to do what Degas 
scorned." This is a mystification. Degas has 

159 



MATISSE, PICASSO, AND OTHERS 

done what he cared to do and has done it in an 
almost perfect fashion. A pupil and follower of 
Ingres, he paved the way for Lautrec, who went 
further afield in his themes and simplifications. 
If Degas broke the classic line of Ingres, Lautrec 
has torn to shreds the linear patterns of Degas. 
Obsessed as we are in America by the horrors of 
magazine illustrations, by the procrustean con- 
ventions of our draughtsmen, by cow-boys of 
wood, metallic horses, melodramatic landscape, 
it will be long before we can sympathise with the 
supple, versatile, bold drawing of Lautrec, who 
gives movement, character, vitaHty in a curve. 

It is not only that he portrays his women of 
the streets without false sentiment (profoundly 
immoral, always, in its results), but he actually 
shows a solicitude for them. He is not the ento- 
mologist with the pinned bug, as is often Degas, 
as was often Flaubert, but a sympathetic inter- 
preter. He doesn't make vice interesting, he 
makes it hideous. His series EUes is worth a 
volume of moralising commentary. And there 
is a certain horse of his — it's as good as a real 
horse. His hthographic method is personal and 
effective. He is one of art's martyrs, and for 
that reason has always been discredited by those 
who conceive art to be a sort of church for morals 
and the sweet retreat of the perfectly respectable 
professor. 



1 60 



VII 

NEW PROMENADES OF AN 
IMPRESSIONIST 

I 
ART IN COLOGNE AND CASSEL 

In Cologne of course you go to the cathedral; 
every one does, even the Colognese on Sundays 
and hohdays. If you ask: What after the cathe- 
dral? the answer invariably is: The Zoological 
garden. Thus one day at least is safely tided 
over. It is the second that sends you to the 
river Rhine, there to quote Coleridge, and later 
to the Gurzenich, and if you are industrious 
enough you may gaze upon the Moltke monu- 
ment and peep into the Church of St. Martin and 
the Church of the Apostles. There is then noth- 
ing else to do but drink Pilsner at the Ewige 
Lampe and rejoice that you left Diisseldorf and 
its ugly mid-nineteenth-century German art. 
But there is another attraction in Cologne besides 
the desire to escape from it on the big boat that 
takes you to Mainz. It is the Wallraff-Richartz 
Museum, where the German Primitives may be 
studied to your heart's content, for no traveller 
seemingly ever visits the neat little gallery. 
i6i 



NEW PROMENADES 

Meister Stephan Lochner is there in all his 
glory, though both at the cathedral and in the 
Archiepiscopal Museum (the Madonna with the 
Violets) there are specimens of his best work. 
The Madonna in the Arbor of Roses is fairly well 
preserved by sheets of shiny varnish, but there 
is not enough of the latter to obscure its pristine 
beauty. The galleries are arranged so that the 
student may go in at one door and come out at 
another. You begin with the triptych of a 
Cologne master, a Crucifixion, cruel, bald, and 
terrifying, and note the date, the middle of the 
fourteenth century. These masters of the Ly- 
versberg Passion, masters of St. Bartholomew, 
with their harsh colouring and angular drawing 
were the veritable realists and not their succes- 
sors, who introduced the qualities of lovely 
colouring and pulchritude. But the old fellows 
have the feeling, the poignant note, the faith 
unfeigned. There is a Madonna with a Flower, 
by an unknown who is called the master of the 
Holy Veronica, which might have come across 
from far-away Italy, so mellifluous are its senti- 
ments and execution, though this sort is rarely 
encountered. 

Stephan Lochner — his Dombild is considered 
the finest painting of the school — is addicted 
to Last Judgments of the same horrific character 
as Hell-Breughel's fantastic writhing composi- 
tions. Comical and astounding as is all this 
creaking mediaeval machinery of redemption and 
punishment, we prefer the serene beauty of the 
162 



NEW PROMENADES 

Madonna in the rose-garden. But a Jan van 
Eyck it is not ; indeed, these chillier Germans of 
the Upper Rhenish school limped perceptibly in 
the rear after the Flemings. Works by the mas- 
ter of the Life of Mary, truly a noble crucifixion 
piece, the Crowning of Mary, the Madonna and 
St. Bernard, the Descent from the Cross — same 
master — another triptych of intense power and 
extreme ugliness, a Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, 
and specimens by the master of St. Bartholomew 
and the master of St. Severin — alas ! for glory 
these be but shadows of former fame — enchain 
the attention because of their native sincerity 
despite their gaudy tones. When we reach the 
portraiture of Bartholomew Bru}^! there is less 
elevation of spirit but a more satisfying prose in 
the matter of realism. 

Bruyn (1493-1555) is best represented in 
Cologne, though he flourishes in Frankfort at 
the Staedel Institute. Holbein had no greater 
sense of reality than this solid painter with the 
bourgeois vision. His portraits are charged with 
character, even if he misses the finer issues of 
the soul. A Lucas Cranach, a Mary Magdalen, 
captures the eye with its quaint costume of the 
lady, who is modestly covered almost to her 
slender neck. She stands in a strong landscape 
with a few distant hills, and the hair of her is in 
ringlets and of an abundance. Her face is tran- 
qviil. Li her left hand she holds the historic box 
of ointment. It is a charming masterpiece. 
Another famous specimen is the portrait of a 
163 



NEW PROMENADES 

young man by the master of the Death of Mary. 
Hieronymus Bosch is represented, but the most 
striking work in the gallery after the Madonna of 
Lochner, and to our taste much more wonderful, 
is the bust portrait of a man by Jan van Scorel 
(1495-1562), a Flemish master who is beginning 
to come into his own in the estimation of con- 
noisseurs. You conjure up the august name of 
Holbein when looking at this solemn-eyed old 
man with the pursy cheeks and the pet dog whose 
little head protrudes from the coat of the sitter. 
A learned pundit this with marvellously painted 
hands. 

Albrecht Diirer, Paris Bordone, Tiepolo, 
Francia, Murillo, Rubens, and Jan Steen are 
represented, and there is a singularly attractive 
Johann Anton Ramboux, a double portrait. 
Among the later Germans are the names of 
Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, whose son was the 
first Tristan in Wagner's poetic music drama; 
Karl Begas, Overbeck, Bendemann, Boettcher, 
and other mediocrities; Piloty and Boecklin are 
not missing. A strong portrait by Wilhelm Leibl 
and Max Liebermann's finely felt self-portrait 
are among the moderns; Slevogt, Peerat, Von 
Hofifmann, Eugenio Lucas, and the rest. An 
unusual note is furnished by Vincent Van Gogh, 
the unhappy young Dutchman who cut his 
throat in 1890 during an attack of madness. 
The head and bust of a young man which is in 
this collection proclaims the painter a superior 
artist to his friend Paul Gauguin, a portrait by 
164 



NEW PROMENADES 

whom hangs hard by. There is power in this 
Van Gogh, and after so many insipidities of a 
by-gone school his vision of a robust reality is 
very refreshing. Altogether a visit to this 
museum is recommended to those tourists whose 
interest in the city is dominated by the extraor- 
dinary Gothic pile. For the art amateur there 
is no other place so plentifully endowed with 
examples of a certain phase of northern Rhine 
art as Cologne. 

The railway journey to Cassel is very inter- 
esting, quite as interesting, though not as full of 
dramatic surprises, as the Rhine trip. After 
leaving Cologne the train winds through the 
valley of the Ruhr, crossing and recrossing that 
river, going uphill the greater part of the time 
and surrounded by scenery that recalls New 
Hampshire. You pass town after town, busy 
thriving towns, with such unfamiliar names as 
Arnisberg, Warburg, Marburg, and if it were 
not for the occasional ruined castle perched on 
distant peaks you could easily fancy yourself in 
northern New England, especially if it is a brac- 
ing October day. Cassel reached and super- 
ficially promenaded is bound to extort a cry of 
admiration. Americans visit this delightful town 
in the hills of Hesse-Nassau, but not in numbers. 
BerHn with its theatres, hotels, and noisy out- 
door life, and Dresden with its more domesticated 
airs, are the objectives of the majority. And thus 
it is that a gem of a city, one of the prettiest in 
Germany, is best known by the Germans. For 

i6s 



NEW PROMENADES 

one thing, it is out of the beaten track; New 
York folk go to Frankfort, to Munich, and not 
enough to Prague and Vienna, and seldom think of 
alighting at Cassel when en route to Nauheim or 
Wiesbaden from Cologne. Nearly seven hundred 
feet above the sea, Cassel is pre-eminently a 
summer city. The air blows crisp, dry, and cool 
across the mountains, and the view from the 
Schone Aussicht is one of the most captivating 
in Europe. Again you are reminded of the White 
Mountains, without such a giant as Mount 
Washington towering over the scene. Naturally 
Cassel is not archaic, as is Liibeck or Rothenberg 
or Nuremberg. It is, on the contrary, very 
modern, very spick and span, very spacious and 
comfortable, with its Hotel Schirmer, as good for 
its size as any in New York ; its big Tietz depart- 
ment store, its Royal Hof Theatre and opera 
house, one of the finest in Germany, far in ad- 
vance of the dingy old opera at Berlin. These 
and the numerous palaces, the magnificent Wil- 
helmshohe palace and gardens, only half an hour 
away, make this place on the river Fulda with 
its one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants 
a magnet to those who like modest little cities 
and not overcrowded advertised monsters of mu- 
nicipalities. 

Your Baedeker tells you that Cassel is an im- 
portant railway centre, which is no news to the 
student in search of the picturesque. For him 
the Karls meadow and the enchanting panorama 
of Wilhelmshohe suffice. The vaunted beauties 
i66 



NEW PROMENADES 

of the Nymphenburg at Munich and the trim, 
aristocratic elegance of Versailles are forgotten 
in the vast ensemble of Wilhelmshohe palace, 
temples, parks, terraces, fountains, cascades, 
forests, and lakes. It is all in the grand manner, 
this royal abode; and you reflect, not without a 
sigh, when the fair picture unrolls at your feet, 
upon the awful results that would follow if it 
were thrown open to the mercies of our own 
choice Sunday citizens. But the public knows 
how to savour life slowly in Germany, particu- 
larly in Cassel. At five o'clock every afternoon 
the knitting brigade is seated drinking coffee ; ev- 
ery table is occupied in the cafes, and gossip is 
running at full speed. From one to three p. M. 
the Casselians take dinner and a nap. No need 
to go to the bank, you will be gently repulsed 
by warning signs. At night the theatres and res- 
taurants are crowded. Leisure is understood in 
this spot. And best of all is the picture gallery. 
Let us suppose that you were not acquainted 
with the contents of the solid-looking though not 
large gallery surrounded by flowers overlooking 
the Karls meadow. Let us suppose as a lover of 
art you go up-stairs and suddenly find yourself 
in the Rembrandt room. What joyous amaze- 
ment! What a cHcking of the tongue and roll- 
ing of the eyes as you enumerate the list, note 
the quality. And then your waxing wonder when 
you behold the Frans Halses. There are seven 
in number, as against twenty-one Rembrandts. 
There are eleven Rubenses, twelve Van Dycks, 
167 



NEW PROMENADES 

twenty-three Wouvermans, three by Antonis 
Mor, think of three canvases by this rare master! 
while there are precious examples by Ter Borch, 
and a fair showing for the Italians and other 
schools. Only eight hundred and twenty-five 
pictures are Hsted in the catalogue, yet we can 
recall no gallery that holds so little dross. That 
doesn't mean that every frame contains a master- 
piece, but we do assert that the negligible can- 
vases are fewer in proportion than in most 
museums. 

Among the portraits by Hals is the celebrated 
Man with the Broad Brimmed Hat, a master- 
piece among any of the Hals pictures. Der 
lustige Zecher is another famous Hals. Then 
there are two bust portraits and the portrait of 
a Patrician, also the Two Children Singing, the 
Boy with a Lute in his left hand. Outside of 
Haarlem there are no better Halses. The Rem- 
brandts naturally begin with the Saskia van 
Uylenberg, his wife, which is as notable as the 
younger Saskia in Dresden and much better than 
the older Saskia in Berlin; Rembrandt at his 
top-notch in the matter of the handling of tex- 
tures, jewels, flesh tones, and character. Then 
follows an embarrassment of pictorial wealth; 
the Old Man with the Chain, depicting the 
beautiful gravity of old age; the study of an Old 
Man, the Architect, the Sentry, the magisterial 
Jacob Blessing his Grandchildren, worthy for its 
style and composition to be hung beside the 
Nightwatch and the Syndics at Amsterdam; 
i68 



NEW PROMENADES 

the head of the painter's father, one Hermann 
(or Harmenz) by name, with his Hebraic linea- 
ments; then a bald-headed man who looks like 
Paul Verlaine, and the portrait of Nik. Bruyn- 
ingh, surely one of the most ingratiating pre- 
sentments of virile beauty in the world; the 
Soldier with the Helmet, a self-portrait painted 
with magic; the touching though not so artis- 
tically important The Family of the Woodcutter. 
Here's a hst that might make water the mouth 
of the art lover. Amsterdam and St. Petersburg 
(the Hermitage) excel this Cassel collection as to 
Rembrandts, though not in quality. An excel- 
lent copy of Der Biirgerfahnreich, the original 
of which is in the possession of the Paris Roths- 
childs, is to be seen. 

The Rubenses and Van Dycks need not be 
gone over in detail; they are all admirable. The 
head of the painter Jan Wildens, by Van Dyck; 
his very Rubensesque Child Jesus, various full- 
length portraits, and the remarkable portrait of 
the painter F, Snyders, quite the equal in quality 
and preservation of the same theme exhibited 
several years ago at the Knoedler Galleries, are 
in the best vein of this artist. Among the 
Rubenses are Meleager and Atalanta, Diana and 
Nymphs, The Flight into Egypt, Hercules In- 
toxicated, Venus, Amor, Bacchus, and Ceres, 
and a large portrait of Nicolas de Respaigne in 
Turkish costume, a very unhkely Rubens. 

We should like to relate further the number 
of good things we saw in this jewel of a gallery. 
169 



NEW PROMENADES 

Durer, Baldung, Grien, Altdorfer, no less than 
six genuine Lucas Cranachs, Bruyn, Herri Met 
de Bles, Van Orley, Van Scorel (three), the en- 
tire Flemish school, a superb Ter Borch, the Lute 
Player, and that virtuoso of candlelight Got- 
fried Scalcken; two Jacob Ruisdaels (one of the 
best period). Millet, Daubigny, and a Troyon, of 
all painters, and an alleged Titian. The Carlo 
Maratta portrait may be better enjoyed at the 
Metropolitan Museum, for it is the original. 
There is a capital Ribera, while Tischbein is 
worthily represented. A Gainsborough land- 
scape more than holds its own, as does a John 
Constable nocturne, among a lot of German 
eighteenth and nineteenth century nobodies. A 
portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer by a certain 
Engelbert Goebel reminded us that Frankfort 
was not many hours distant. 

One morning after wondering at the bad taste 
of the giant statue of Ludwig Spohr, king of 
German violinists, whose monument stands on 
the Theaterplatz, we drifted into an exhibition 
of the Kassel Kunstverein, and there got a 
foretaste of the present desperate condition of 
modern German art, tainted as it is by French 
impressionism, Post and otherwise, all inevitably 
misunderstood. Ernest Oppler of Berlin, Julius 
Schrag of Munich, Karl Thiemann of Dachau, 
who has talent as a wood-engraver and pas- 
teUist; Georg Broel, Hermann Keuth, H. J. 
Koenig, and Edmund Steppes were among those 
present. The etchers were headed by A. Baert- 
170 



NEW PROMENADES 

son, a Belgian genuinely gifted. Among the 
dead, Haden and Rops were to be seen; the 
coloured etchings of the unique Felicien Rops 
were in excellent state and offered at surpris- 
ingly low figures. Zorn too was in the group, a 
group that made one forget the vulgarity, brutal- 
ity, and technical ineptitudes of the men who 
used oil as their medium to express the absence 
of temperament. But the glory of Cassel is its 
gallery of old masters. 



II 
ART IN FRANKFORT 

One afternoon we found ourselves in Sachs- 
enhausen hardly knowing how we got there. 
Sachsenhausen, be it understood, might be called 
the Brooklyn of Frankfort-on-the-Main, but who 
ever heard of any one reaching Brooklyn with- 
out his knowledge? On the left bank of the placid 
river Main this suburb is approached by such 
broad roadways that you are not conscious you 
are traversing bridges, and only when you find 
yourself staring at the Dome which rears its 
spire over the spacious streets and huddled 
houses of the city do you realise the transposition. 
This naturally if you take the tram-cars; walk- 
ing gives a better view. But if the compre- 
hensive tableau gained by our mistake compen- 
sated in some sort, the excursion did not help us 
to discover the house where lived and died that 
171 



NEW PROMENADES 

amiable old gentleman and patron saint of the 
suffragettes, Arthur Schopenhauer. We merely 
mistook the wrong side of the Main for the 
Schone Aussicht, therefore No. 17 was missed. 
Later a pessimistic policeman put us to rights 
and we recrossed on a bridge lower down — or 
is it further up? — and soon found the gloomy 
old building where the gallant philosopher Hved 
from 1843 to 1859 and died in one next door in 
i860. Here the fame denied him for so many 
decades came to console if not actually to molKfy 
his irritability. We were not duly impressed by 
the commonplace commercial atmosphere and 
were more than glad to escape to the Juden- 
gasse, whence sprang the Rothschilds. 

There is no denying the beauty, even splen- 
dour, of appearances in Frankfort. You easily ap- 
preciate the popularity of the city with American 
travellers. It is not so loose-gaited and gemiith- 
Hch as Munich, but it wears a more smiling mask 
than BerHn, which puts on Prussian airs since 
some flatterer called it a world-city. Frankfort 
is amiably hospitable. There is the south in its 
manners; the chmate is more mellow than Berlin. 
The magnitude of pubHc places and buildings, 
boulevards, for the Kaiserstrasse is a veritable 
boulevard, the monumental style of the opera- 
house, the Romer (Rathhaus), the Royal Theatre, 
hotels and churches impress one with a sense 
of solidity, of wealth well spent, of artistic 
taste. Life after all is not a frantic struggle in 
crazy excavations, with a dynamite obbligato, 
172 



NEW PROMENADES 

a medley of dirt and din. That Germany is 
prosperous is demonstrated by the way its in- 
habitants spend money in the cafes, theatres, 
and opera. In Frankfort, as in Berlin or Cologne 
or Cassel, you fight for your table in the famous 
Kaiser Keller, and no wonder ! About one thou- 
sand of your fellow-beings, chiefly Teutonic, are 
imbued with the same desire as you, and at the 
same time. The only time we ever saw a German 
excited was when he tried to get a seat in a 
restaurant ahead of some one else, and at Ham- 
burg when he struggled like a football virtuoso 
to force his presence into the opera-house where 
Caruso was singing in a novelty written by a 
young chap named Verdi, the opera Ballo in 
Maschera. Talk about love of art! 

The first act of piety of the sentimental voy- 
ager is a visit to the Goethe house at Grosse 
Hirschgraben 23, in the centre of the town. Here 
the poet was born, here he spent his boyhood. 
He was reared in comparative luxury, though 
according to our modern notions the house seems 
rather bare. After visiting Weimar and the gar- 
den-house and the museum there seems paucity 
of personal interest in the collection at Frank- 
fort, rich as it is in memories of the youthful 
Goethe. The same old guardian, who over 
twenty years ago was precisely as loquacious, 
said that he remembered our name but forgot 
our face — he must have heard this bon-mot of 
Oscar Wilde's — and did not fail to remind us 
that he had served nearly forty years as cicerone 

173 



NEW PROMENADES 

in the historical spot. What lies he has told, 
what "gulls" he has mystified. A pet anecdote 
of his is the following, and we give it publicity 
because we never saw it in print. Goethe's son 
was fond of wine and his grandson followed suit. 
Once in the memory of the keeper this grandson 
of an illustrious poet came to the Grosse Hirsch- 
graben but stopped at a certain hotel across the 
street. When urged to visit the birthplace of 
his granddaddy he shrugged his shoulders and 
ordered a fresh bottle. The curious part of the 
story is not the wine but the ineffable laziness, 
or call it Olympian indifference, of the man. 
He didn't care a hang whether his ancestor 
lived in Frankfort or Weimar. To Weimar he 
returned, where he died from thirst, or was it the 
remorse of indigestion? 

In Sachsenhausen, about ten minutes from the 
heart of Frankfort, is the Staedel Institute (please 
read guide-books for the history of Herr Staedel, 
who founded the institution in 1816-17). It is 
an art gallery pleasantly situated, overlooldng 
the river, and it contains many noteworthy pic- 
tures, not so many Rembrandts and Halses as 
at Cassel, nor yet is it such a tremendous gallery 
as is the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm at Berlin. 
There are, however, Rembrandts, Halses, Velas- 
quezes, Rubenses, Diirers, Botticellis, Cranachs, 
a Veronese, a Jan Van Eyck — unequalled the 
world over — a Holbein, a Vermeer, and a fair 
sprinkling of the Flemish Primitives. Modern 
French art has not been neglected, and alto- 

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gether the seven hundred and odd numbers of 
the catalogue make a brave showing. It would 
be manifestly a thankless task to enumerate the 
various "best" canvases of the Staedel Institute. 
A glance must suffice. Let us begin at the be- 
ginning, aesthetically at least. Despite Dr. 
Benkard's sketch of the Rembrandts it may be 
acknowledged that neither in quality nor in 
quantity do they approach the Cassel collection. 
But they are interesting, and in one instance rare; 
for surely such violence and cruelty as are mani- 
fested in the Triumph of DeHlah are seldom de- 
noted in the works of this master. There are 
cruelty and obscenity combined in his etching 
of Joseph resisting the abysmal advances of 
Potiphar's wife, and we could if we had the 
space mention some other examples, yet none 
approaches in writhing and tumult and riotous 
colouring this Frankfort picture. 

The Blinding of Samson is horrible to gaze 
upon; you shudder and turn with relief to 
the portrait of Margarete von Bildersecq, with 
its sumptuous modelling and its homely attrac- 
tiveness. In this composition, dated 1633, the 
painter meets Hals on his own field and almost 
vanquishes him. The note is bourgeois, com- 
monplace; there is mystery in the atmospheric 
envelope. Whoever Margarete may have been 
she was above all else a practical housewife, ad- 
dicted to large clean ruffs and lace caps; fur- 
thermore, she tramped the earth with solemn, 
solid feet, and she loved substantial food and 

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NEW PROMENADES 

drink. Rembrandt is her historian and every 
stroke of his brush depicts a trait of character. 
His Saul and David is not as eloquent as the 
same subject at The Hague. Now that Dr. 
Bredius is seeking to rob Rembrandt of the 
glory of being the creator of Elizabeth Bas at 
the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, — the most 
wonderful old lady in the world of dreams and 
paint, — it would not be a bad idea for the 
worthy director of the Mauritshuis at The 
Hague, where he has placed several peculiar 
Rembrandt discoveries (?) of his own, to visit 
Frankfort and study the Margarete von Bilder- 
secq. He above all other experts of old Dutch 
art ought to know that Rembrandt had more 
than one string to his bow of styles. Elizabeth 
Bas is one, the Night Watch another, the head 
of the cavalier at Cassel a third, the etchings 
a fourth, his landscapes a fifth, — and no Her- 
cules Seegher ever approached them; think of 
the mystic chiaro-oscuro of The Mill, — his 
Biblical themes a sixth, and so on — a Shake- 
spearian versatility indeed. 

Of the two examples by Velasquez at the 
Staedel Institute the portrait of Cardinal Borgia 
is the more significant. This ecclesiastic, whose 
full name was Casper Borgia y Velasco, was also 
Archbishop of Sevilla and Toledo (1582-1645). 
His is not an unkindly countenance, if you are 
not afraid of facing the consequences. It is one 
of the painter's masterpieces of psychological 
observation without unfriendly comment on the 
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NEW PROMENADES 

facts of the features. Borgia, according to con- 
temporary accounts, was a man of intellect, a 
lover of the arts, a sober, God-fearing man and 
one not averse to boihng oil for contumacious 
heretics. Senor Beruete throws cold water on 
your mounting enthusiasm for this masterly 
characterisation by proving to his own satis- 
faction that the original work has long since van- 
ished, the pair of portraits at Frankfort and in 
the Cathedral of Toledo being copies. This may 
be true, but we hasten to state that the Toledo 
specimen is a poor affair compared with this vital 
canvas in the Staedel Institute. If Beruete had 
said that the portrait of the Infanta Margarita 
Theresa was not a genuine Velasquez one could 
well credit him. It does not approach the Louvre 
portrait or the one in the Vienna Imperial Gal- 
lery, and suggests, despite the passages of paint, 
silvery in tenderness, the brush-work of that 
precious son-in-law of Velasquez, Senor Mazo. 

But let the heathen rage, there are two por- 
traits by Frans Hals that throw into the shade 
everything else in the gallery except the Van 
Eyck. A man and a woman, the latter equals in 
sharpness of veracity though not in charm the 
Elizabeth Bas of Rembrandt, and makes pale 
the memory of the elderly dame accredited to 
Hals at the Metropolitan Museum. The Staedel 
Holbein is the portrait of Sir George of Cornwall, 
a stirring composition in which the blacks and 
whites struggle, although with harmonious results. 
As is always the case with this master, the hu- 
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NEW PROMENADES 

manity overshadows his technical methods, which 
only means that he is a consummate technician. 
Two Botticellis are not of overwhelming impor- 
tance; one doesn't visit Germany altogether for 
its Italian art; nevertheless we wish our museum 
boasted such a pair, particularly the Madonna 
and Child. There is a Veronese, a studio piece, 
Mars and Venus the subject, the Venus being the 
same model as the Venus given to Veronese in 
the Metropolitan Museum. The posture of the 
god and goddess is different, though the Cupid 
is there. Perhaps this is one of a series of panels. 
We admired the sHm virginal figure of the Lucas 
Cranach Venus; the forthright sincerity of the 
Matsys portrait of a man; the purple splendour 
of the astronomer's robe in the Vermeer; the 
Veronica of the Master of FlemaUe, Jacques 
Daret: Diirer's Job subjected to the mercies of 
his wife — the first advanced woman in Bibli- 
cal history; a luminous interior by P. Janssens, 
nearly equal to the best De Hoogh ; a Crucifixion 
by the FlemaUe master, positively pathetic in its 
expression though dangerously near that path- 
ological point so powerfully illustrated in the 
Crucifixion by Mathias Griinewald at Colmar, 
and the Jan Van Eyck Madonna with Infant, 
formerly known as the Madonna of Lucca, after 
its former owner, the Duke of Lucca. It was 
acquired by the Staedel Institute at The Hague 
from the collection of King William II of Hol- 
land in 1850, and it is the noblest Van Eyck in 
Germany, notwithstanding the superior historic 
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NEW PROMENADES 

and artistic interest attached to the two panels 
in Berlin from the great Ghent Adoration of the 
Lamb. The Frankfort Van Eyck glows with a 
rich rubyhke warmth. Its decorative quality 
almost matches its devotional character. 

In the same gallery as The Virgin by the 
Master of Flemalle, celebrated with undue praise, 
we think, by the late J.-K. Huysmans, is the 
mysterious portrait of a young woman which so 
intrigued the attention of the French writer. 
For Huysmans she was both exquisite and vi- 
cious, androgynous and enticing. Who was she? 
He hazards that it might be Giulia Farnese, 
called Giulia la bella, "puritas impuritatis," who 
became the favourite of Pope Alexander VI, 
mayhap his daughter. By whom was she 
painted? The catalogue says Bartolomeo da 
Venezea or Veneziano (?). According to Lanzi 
there are at least eleven of the tribe. And ac- 
cording to our humble opinion the portrait might 
have come straight from the brush of Botticelli. 
Every line, the epicene expression, the hair, 
head, flat bust, hand, above all the delicacy of 
the fingers and the shape of the nails, proclaim 
the Botticelli studio. The dominating tonality 
is a wonderful white. Huysmans was correct in 
calhng to the attention of the critics the enigmatic 
character of the head, which would have fas- 
cinated Walter Pater. 

We have but superficially praised the contents 
of this very attractive museum on the Main, 
where one encounters a George Inness or a Keith 
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NEW PROMENADES 

cheek by jowl with a Sisley, a Monet, or a Hob- 
bema. Catholicity rules, and it is exceedingly 
refreshing in its results. It is hardly necessary 
to add that there are several excellent Tisch- 
beins, a splendid Terborch, and a capital por- 
trait of Schopenhauer by Jules Lunteschiitz, 
dated 1855. 

When in Frankfort a trip to Darmstadt, half 
an hour away, should be a labour of love to 
art amateurs, for there in the archducal palace 
in addition to a rather mediocre art gallery is 
the rhost treasured of Hans Holbeins, possibly 
painted in 1526, representing six members of the 
Jakob Meier family kneeling on either side of 
the Virgin and the Child Jesus. It is a more 
finely conserved work than its former rival in 
the Basel Museum, the Madonna of Solothurn, 
though for years it was considered a copy and 
the excellent copy in Dresden the original. 
The restoration by Hauser in 1888 cleared up all 
doubts as to the identity of the Burgomaster 
Meier (or Meyer) Madonna, as it is entitled, and 
you may account yourself one of the lucky to 
have studied it. The excessive heat and drought 
of 191 1, which endured seven weeks in Darm- 
stadt, warped the panel, and the lower folds of 
the robe of the Virgin bulge a little. Other- 
wise the work is free from the corrosion of time 
and the detestable additions of the restorer. 

There is no evasive handling here, yet the 
human soul transfigured by rehgious awe and 
fervour and in all its subtlety shines forth from 
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NEW PROMENADES 

these solidly modelled countenances. No caper- 
ing chromatics distract the looker-on from the 
beauty of the few large tones soberly soldered 
one to the other without a hint of either empti- 
ness or huddhng. Humanity is present in the 
breadth of feeHng and simplicity of expression, 
and the religious sincerity is indubitable. Der 
Dichter spricht, and also the master painter 
enamoured of lovely surfaces and supreme sen- 
timent. Impeccable Holbein! 

ni 

NEW YORK — COSMOPOLIS 



When Merlin the Magician visited Prester 
John, as related in the veracious chronicle of 
Edgar Quinet, he discovered that potentate 
dwelling in an abbey of fantastic and conglom- 
erate architecture; the building was a mixture 
of pagoda, mosque, synagogue, cathedral, Greek 
temple, Byzantine and Gothic chapels, basilicas, 
with domes, spires, turrets, minarets, and towers 
innumerable. To complete the intellectual con- 
fusion of Merlin, he saw Prester John alternately 
reading from the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran. 
With what consternation would the victim of 
Vivien greet the picture of New York if we could 
fancy Merlin on a Staten Island ferry-boat? 
Once within the zone of lofty buildings would he 
not snap his magic wand in the impotence of 
i8i 



NEW PROMENADES 

sheer envy? And that great cosmopolitan, 
Stendhal — can we not imagine him viewing with 
angry, contemptuous eyes the towering triumphs 
of a democracy he so loathed? The master- 
builders! They are of our city, building not 
only homes for humans, but dizzy hives for 
supermen — the American business man is your 
true superman nowadays; his ideahsm is de- 
flected from the region of poetics to the plane of 
reality ; his reahty the subduing of Things, and the 
making of them a symbol. The kings who erected 
the Pyramids, the satraps who helped fashion 
Babylon's mighty hanging gardens and palaces 
that reared their heads to the skies like swans, 
those rulers with monumental undertakings from 
Karnak to Stonehenge are paralleled, nay, out- 
done by the designers of modern New York. 

Twenty years ago the skyline was hardly in- 
spiring; though from the heights of the Hudson 
the view was then, even as it is now and ever 
will be, magnificent. Above Wall Street, on 
the east side of Broadway, was a congested busi- 
ness district. A few spires. Trinity Church, the 
Tribune Building, and the World Building were 
the conspicuous objects from the lower bay. 
To-day you search for Trinity between cliffs of 
marble; the World Building may be seen from 
East River or Broadway, and in New Jersey you 
catch the golden gleam of its dome. The Wool- 
worth Building has outdistanced it in the race 
skyward, while the Tribune Building by com- 
parison seems of normal height. 
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NEW PROMENADES 

What a difference, too, there was on lower 
Manhattan! The Battery, a clot of green as 
you saw it from ferry-boat or steam-ship, was 
surrounded by a few buildings, imposing enough, 
yet to-day mere pediments for their loftier rivals. 
Here and there a church looking like a sharpened 
pencil protruded from the background. You 
could see churches then. Now one makes pil- 
grimages to them through canons. 

Survey on a clear day our new skyline. The 
low sandy spit of Manhattan Island which our 
grandfathers knew is thronged by extraordinary 
palaces and topped by the Woolworth Build- 
ing. The position of the Singer campanile is 
inevitable. It lies at the centre of your vision 
on the return trip from Staten Island. The 
huge ramparts of marble aligning the lower 
island are waffle-faced because of their innumer- 
able windows. The City Investing Building 
cranes ambitiously beside the Singer tower; it 
makes of the pair a hybrid beast of architecture. 
Yet from the Hudson the two violently con- 
trasted piles blend, and if there is a mist the 
combination sets you to dreaming of a far-away 
exotic aerial palazzo in some city conceived by a 
John Martin or a Piranesi. The Hudson Ter- 
minal buildings overwhelm; their vast spread 
suggests not alone the city population daily har- 
boured in their offices, but also a sense of tre- 
mendous density, size, weight. Following the 
eye we see the Washington Life, the West Street, 
American Surety, United States Express, Empire, 

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NEW PROMENADES 

Manhattan Life, St. Paul, American Tract, and 
Municipal buildings. At first the general effect 
is grotesque, denticulated, a jagged row of teeth, 
with an isolated superb snag on the Hudson 
River side. Honeycombed with eyes are all 
these habitations, eyes that watch the Old World 
as it enters the New. War from without would 
mean warring upon marble cliffs. Nineveh had 
not their match, and on their miles of roofs are 
gardens which make the description of Babylon 
childish. What a fabulous entanglement of 
styles, with structural lines effaced, of bold gross 
masses, not unlike Benezzo Gozzoli's quaint 
Babylon. To shut out the overmastering vision 
you turn your back and the sights of Governor's 
Island, Ellis Island, and the Goddess of Liberty 
reassure you. The statue is still as ugly as ever 
and her torch a menacing club in a mailed fist. 
It commands: "Work!" Over the portals of 
Ellis Island might be inscribed — (Dante a re- 
hours) — "All despair abandon, ye who enter 
here" — for New York is not a city of Dis; it 
is the mouth, the melting-pot of America, and in 
America there is ever hope for the hopeful. 

On days when the wind is benign, the iron- 
coloured clouds a-curdle, erect steam-plumes cut 
the sky, the sun stains the waters, then the 
sinister battlements no longer appal, nor does 
the city huddled and perched behind them un- 
pleasantly excite the imagination. Again it is 
atmosphere that tells, atmosphere that makes 
from the shrill architectural dissonances and lace- 
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NEW PROMENADES 

like facades a new harmony the diapason of which 
hums through your consciousness — the muted 
thunder of New York. Already by virtue of its 
happy symmetry the Singer tower has caught the 
tone of time. That its sovereignty of position 
and height has been wrested from it was to have 
been expected ; implacable to sense of beauty are 
the needs of a growing city. Let us hope a newer 
architecture will throw double sixes as has the 
lucky Singer. I recall the days when Walt Whit- 
man's "mast-hemm'd Manhattan" had an actual 
meaning. Now it is funnel-encircled Manhattan, 
and in a few years it may be a Manhattan of 
aeronauts. Tullio Lombardo, Bernini, and Chris- 
topher Wren could not in a triple fantasia evolve 
such a pasticcio as this island town. It stuns. 
It exalts. It is inconceivable; yet there it stands, 
unashamed, with its absence of rhythmic archi- 
tectural values and its massive extravagances. 
Up crowded expressive Broadway we go, 
resolutely avoiding arrests before reincarnations 
of classic Greece and Rome; before the vision in 
shallow side streets of public exchanges that 
would not have shamed the Acropolis; before 
the gleam of sculptured frieze, golden cornice, 
Corinthian columns, acanthus wreaths and liber- 
tine arabesques. Oh ! the pity of it, the pity of 
Manhattan's shape, with its head of a monster 
saurian showing from the Jersey side. All this 
polyphony of steel, stone, and marble is so 
cramped that it will never sing its glorious music 
with a free throat. Space has conditioned these 

185 



NEW PROMENADES 

structures, as structure has conditioned their 
material. A breathing-spot formerly was old 
Trinity Church, Alas! it fights for breath, en- 
compassed by marble giants. Some of them 
might have been transported from a Brobding- 
nagian Venice. Their capitals are exquisite, and 
only these stony precipices pierced by windows 
tell you where you are. Nevertheless, Trinity, 
facing Wall Street as it does, retains more than a 
moiety of its spiritual charm. One might hope 
that the busy brokers and the hustling little 
manikins in the streets would halt their chaffer- 
ing when the quarters chime from the steeple — 
as halted the mirth-makers in Poe's shuddering 
tale, The Masque of the Red Death. But no, 
you hear the lisp and silvery clangour of the bell 
in the steeple; Wall Street pays no heed. Only 
the dead in the churchyard receive this benison 
of tone. 

Let us pass on, noting the Trinity and Empire 
buildings and finding ourselves midgets with 
upturned dizzy gaze at the foot of the Singer. 
Ernest Flagg, its architect, has put into practice 
his theory that the new type of buildings should 
be pyramidal and terraced at a certain height; 
the tower, thus set back, gives both light and 
air to its neighbours as well as to itself. Whether 
or not a halt will come in the upward progress of 
this city one dares not say. About 1886, as I 
remember it, there had been a decided lull in 
building for some years. A few years later saw a 
boom, 1900 another; to-day it is difficult to tell 
186 



NEW PROMENADES 

where our Babel will end. Already the Metro- 
politan Life tower is threatened by the plans 
of the nine-hundred-and-nine-foot tower of the 
Equitable Life. No sooner are fifty stories 
achieved than sixty- two are contemplated. And 
what of the projected tower one thousand feet 
high of the new Mills Building! Or of that im- 
pious proposal to build two thousand feet in the 
air! Is the fate of Babel forgotten! Certainly 
Mr. Flagg has the root of the matter, for, what 
with the crowding of tall structures on narrow 
frontages and the increasing risk from fire, the 
future comfort and safety of greatest New 
York may be problematical. The attempt to 
vary the tone of the new buildings is successful. 
Terra cotta fagades of colourful sorts are em- 
ployed with enhanced richness, and the purity 
of the atmosphere, an Italianate purity, brings 
out with a sharp definition the clear lines and 
tints of these new structures. 

Another breathing-spot, and the City Hall lies 
pearl-like in its square. What a joy to gaze upon ! 
What a cool draught to the spirit parched by the 
tophet of stone from which we have emerged! 
It is hemmed about by many wonderful struc- 
tures, the Hall of Records not being the most 
beautiful, while the Home Insurance is the most 
graceful; not to mention the Municipal Building. 
Then follow the wriggling vermicular street and 
the white suavities of Grace Church — why 
waste time lower down on mediocrities? Union 
Square is achieved. Of the far West Side or 
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NEW PROMENADES 

the far East Side we need not speak. Our in- 
genuous friends the sociological novelists and 
benevolent "slummers" have told us all about 
the horrors of the East Side. And that dis- 
tinguished observer, Henry James, has called the 
Ghetto, Jerusalem Disinfected. He should have 
chosen rather Tasso's title, Jerusalem Deliv- 
ered, for on the much despised, little under- 
stood, fairly comfortable East Side the Chosen 
Race is safely anchored. It is natural that the 
present stupendous New York offends visiting 
Rip Van Winkles; but the Socialist prophets, 
why has it failed to please them? What more 
perfect phalanstery for your latter-day Fourier- 
ites than those big buildings housing thousands 
and tens of thousands! Why doesn't H. G. 
Wells see that here his dreamer's dreams are 
come true? Nothing is lacking but the landing- 
stages, the big aviators, and the "all aboard" 
for Europe or Asia on the sky-steamers. How 
long will these be missing? There is also real- 
ised his dream of a population toihng in the 
depths for a privileged few and a unique "boss." 
Yet the English seer when confronted by actual- 
ity was aghast, possibly because the fulfilment 
of his prophecy appeared in such questionable 
shapes. 

New York is not beautiful in the old order 
of aesthetics. Its beauty often savours of the 
monstrous, for the scale is epical. Too many of 
our buildings are glorified chimneys. But what 
a picture of titanic energy, of cyclopean am- 



NEW PROMENADES 

bition, there is if you look over Manhattan from 
Washington Heights. The wilderness of flat 
roofs of London, the winning profile of Paris, the 
fascination of Rome from Trinita dei Monti, of 
Buda from across the Danube at Pesth: these 
are not more startling or dramatic than New 
York; especially when the chambers of the 
West are filled by the tremulous opal of a dying 
day, or a lyric moonrise paves a path of silver 
across the hospitable sea we call our harbour. 

II 

Union Square is altered beyond recognition. 
In our town memories like rats are chased away 
by the ever-rising flood of progress. There is no 
room for ghosts or landmarks in New York. 
Thus Union Square to-day is less interesting 
than that pretty coign, Stuyvesant Park. More 
vital is Madison Square, with its prow of a bi- 
zarre stone snow-plough, the Flatiron-FuUer 
Building, cleaving its way northward; with the 
Giralda tower on the Madison Square Garden, 
St. Gaudens's Diana of the Cross-Currents, and 
the memory of the cheery old Fifth Avenue 
Hotel. Badly posed, nevertheless the marble 
court-house is still a thing of interest. One of 
the loftiest buildings in New York blots out a 
section of the eastern sky: the Metropohtan Life 
Building with its tower. Another campanile! 
Beautiful it is, not because of its stature — the 
still loftier Paris Eiffel Tower is an iron scarecrow 
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NEW PROMENADES 

— but because of its lines. I watched it from 
my uptown eyrie while it was being built; saw 
its long legs and ribs gradually soar into space like 
one of Wells's Martians on their tripods. Down 
the vista of Madison Avenue, its side streets bar- 
ring with sunlight the tracks of the electric cars, 
the Singer Building lifts out of the ruck and 
mass of the crowded skyline ; the Flatiron strives 
jealously for first place in the race to the Times 
Building; but the Metropolitan is the lord of 
middle New York. 

To enjoy the delicate and massive drawing of 
the Times Building as etched against a southern 
sky — now ardent, now fire-tipped, jewelled, or 
swimming in the bewitching breath of a sum- 
mer's day — one must study it from the north. 
A silhouette in the evening — and often like a 
child's church of chalk lighted at Christmas — 
it flushes rosy in the morning, and during the 
afternoon the repercussion of the hot sun waves 
drowns it in an incandescent haze. The fronds 
of stone ranging below it support this bell-tower 
as if it were an integral part of them. It, too, 
aspires northward where the park blooms an 
emerald oblong. On its pinnacle the city below 
wears the precise, mapped-out look and checkered 
image it has from a balloon or pinned on a land- 
surveyor's chart. What a New York! Clubs 
that are palaces, hospitals that are cities, pala- 
tial theatres and churches more romanesque than 
Rome or duelling in terms of Gothic with the ec- 
clesiastical masterpieces of the Old World! 
190 



NEW PROMENADES 

Why linger on the Great White Way or in the 
luxurious glass houses Hning and lighting this 
shppery, ghttering region; a region of mediocre 
plays, indigestion, headaches, and the moral 
herring-bone of dry and dusty to-morrows! 
Rather let us wonder why Washington Square 
has in part escaped the rage of the iconoclasts. 
It stiU looks, on the north side, Hke an early novel 
of Mr. James. Some of lower Fifth Avenue is 
natural. But woe! When you pass north of 
Fourteenth Street, where are the mansions of 
yesteryear? The pave over which once passed 
the trim boots of a vanishing aristocracy now 
holds a multitude of Yiddish workers from the 
ugly factories along this part of the avenue, men 
who talk in a harsh speech and block progress 
from twelve to one o'clock every week-day. 
Occasionally Mark Twain, in white and always 
smoking, goes by, not a phantom but a reahty 
who makes us beUeve the past was not a night- 
mare. [ I speak of ten years ago.] However, if 
Mr. HoweUs can admire the new Rome and take 
it in tranquil doses, why should we selfishly 
resent the destruction of our pleasant memo- 
ries to make way for such alien shapes? Or de- 
spair because the Order of the Golden Fleece is 
rampant in our business and poHtical world? 
Or grow excited over the anatomy of the new 
architecture? Let us be thankful that the old 
stupid bourgeois brown-stone will soon be a 
thing of the past; that the new business houses 
are seeking a note of individuahty in their con- 
191 



NEW PROMENADES 

struction. Nor need we be shocked because of 
the anachronism of a pawn-shop under a basil- 
ica. This is the New World; older orders are 
changing. Why not architecture — and man- 
ners, too, in the fierce St. Vitus dance after 
the dollars? 

Palaces again fill your eye on Fifth Avenue 
from Madison Square to the end of the Park. 
Jewellers who transact business in the quarters 
of a Venetian doge; shopping palaces; book- 
sellers that handle an army of books in a space 
as vast as a cathedral; banks that look like 
Greek temples; hotels — the Waldorf-Astoria, 
Astor, Ritz, McAlpin, Vanderbilt, Plaza, Go- 
tham, Savoy, Netherland or St. Regis — that 
are on nodding acquaintance in mid-air with 
the Belmont, the Astor, the Singer or the Metro- 
politan buildings. Wander a block westward and 
you will encounter a tiny miracle of early Floren- 
tine, the Herald Building, a challenge of beauty 
to the big prosaic department stores. Ugly but 
useful the elevated railways that go spidering 
up and down the city; while in its bowels we 
spin through a labyrinth, whether to The Bronx 
or Jersey or Long Island or the upper West 
Side. Another halt after admiring St. Patrick's 
Cathedral is enforced before the Vanderbilt 
mansion, a vision of an Old World chateau. 
From Sixtieth Street Arcady begins, the Arcady 
of multimilHonaires and them that go about in 
sight-seeing coaches. Pass the MetropoHtan 
Museum, the obelisk, Mr. Carnegie's comfortable 
192 



NEW PROMENADES 

house; go over to Riverside Drive and from the 
Soldiers and Sailors Monument look down the 
river and ask yourself where there is a lovelier or 
more impressive sight. Or, gazing northward, 
note that first jut of the Pahsades, like the pro- 
file of a sullen monster with the river broaden- 
ing, hurrying, ghstening, and the wide fling of 
the panorama — little wonder your vocabulary 
makes for extravagance! Sound, colour, form, 
substance, in what rainbow region is locked the 
secret of their verbal transposition? We are 
not overproud of our Palisades. In Germany they 
would rival the Rhine scenery — but here, in 
America, we haven't the time to visit them or 
bestow more than a passing word of praise. The 
much-mocked Hudson River School of landscape- 
painters had at least the courage of good taste. 
It is a pretty idea to see New York as a sym- 
bol either of cruelty, waste, pain, pleasure, or as 
a haven for the persecuted ; in the concrete, not 
merely the New York of the impressionistic 
brush, she is tremendous. Yet we may view her 
symbol-wise if for naught but mental economy. 
The city Hes sprawhng encompassed by three 
rivers, a monstrous Gulliver, overrun by busy 
Lilliputians who, the surer to subjugate her, have 
builded bridges about her, making her a part of 
Long Island and — underneath the river and the 
gliding and the conquest of boats — of New Jer- 
sey. Soon bridges across the open Hudson will 
make our neighbour State next door. Bridges! 
Washington, High Bridge, over the Harlem; 

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Queensboro, Williamsburg, Manhattan, and the 
Brooklyn bridges across the East River. Yet 
not enough. Some day both rivers will be 
spanned by broad-bosomed roadways; New York 
will have ceased to be an island. 

On Sunium's heights, on that enchanted 
plateau known as the Acropolis of America, 
where are Columbia University, the Teachers 
and Barnard colleges, where the Cathedral of 
St. John the Divine already commands the city 
— as does the Sacre-Coeur at Paris — we breathe 
another atmosphere. The sense of greater space, 
of air untainted, of a milieu in which broods the 
sentiment of the grave and academic, of repose 
and absence from the strain and roar in the streets 
beneath — these rare qualities endear the spot 
to the contemplative mind. The College of the 
City of New York is a noble group of dark field 
stone and white terra cotta, the central tower of 
which burns curiously in the sunhght or fades in 
the shade of the clouds. And the New York 
University on University Heights, The Bronx 
and the Hall of Fame, stir the pulse. Of the 
Bronx Park, the Speedway, of the immense tracts 
of developed territory and wide boulevards in 
upper New York, soon to become the homes of 
the thousands who Jam the subways, surface 
roads, and elevated railways — a monotonous 
mob going south in the morning, north at night, 
a mob of which we are all members — over this 
region we cannot speculate. We expect some 
time to see streets and terraces in the air to re- 
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lieve the crowded surface traffic. Cosmopolis! 
A Cosmopolis never dreamed of by Stendhal. 

When the softer and richer symphony of the 
night arrives, when the jarring of your ego by 
innumerable racking noises has ceased, when 
the city is preparing to forget the toiHng day- 
time, then the magic of the place begins to oper- 
ate. That missing soul of New York peeps forth 
in the nocturnal transfiguration. Not on Broad- 
way, however, with its thousand lights and lies, 
not in opera-houses, theatres, or restaurants, but 
on some perch of vantage from which the noc- 
turnal scene in all its mysterious melancholy 
beauty may be studied. You see a cluster of 
blazing lights at the West Side Circle, a ladder 
of fire the pivot. Farther down theatreland 
dazzles with its tongues of flame. Literally a 
pit, white-hot. Across in the cool shadows are 
the level lines of twinkling points of the bridges. 
There is always the sense of waters not far away. 
All the hotels from the Majestic and Plaza to the 
Belmont and Manhattan are tier upon tier starry 
with illumination. "The night hath a thousand 
eyes" surely applies to Gotham after sundown. 
Fifth and Madison Avenues are long shafts of 
bluish-white electric globes. The new monoKths 
burn, as if to a fire god, votive offerings; while 
the Metropolitan tower is furnished with a light 
high enough to be seen in New Jersey. Fifth 
Avenue mansions seem snow-driven in the moon- 
light. The synagogue at Seventy-sixth Street 
and Fifth Avenue, half Byzantine, half Mo- 

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NEW PROMENADES 

resque, as it lies sleeping in the rays of the moon- 
light might be mistaken for an Asiatic mosque. 
The Park, as if liquefied, flows in plastic 
rhythms, a lake of velvety foliage, a mezzotint 
dividing the East from the West. Sudden fur- 
nace bonfires leap up from the Brooklyn side; 
they are purely commercial; you look for Whist- 
ler's rockets. Battery Place and the Bay are 
operatic, the setting for some thrilling fairy spec- 
tacle. Oh I the dim scattered plain of granite 
house-tops, like some petrified cemetery of im- 
memorial Titans. New York at night loses its 
New World aspect; it wears the patina of time. 
It is a city exotic, semi-barbaric, the fantasy of 
an Eastern sorcerer mad enough to evoke from 
forgotten seas the lost Atlantis. 

Ill 

It may be pure fancy, but many feel as in no 
other spot that the planet upon whose crust we 
move and have our being revolves faster under 
New York. The tempo of Kving is swifter, the 
pulse beats more rapidly. The tumult and 
alarums of the day are more exciting than a cycle 
in Cathay — or Paris or London. VitaUty is 
at its hottest. We are like a colony of ants dis- 
turbed by a stranger. We are caught in eddies 
and whirlpools and on the edges of foaming 
breakers; we are dumped on densely populated 
sands. A national mill seizes the newly landed 
emigrant and like a sausage-making machine 
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NEW PROMENADES 

turns him into a citizen. But it first washes his 
face; in America cleanliness is next to patriot- 
ism. As if they drink from some well of forget- 
fulness, the newcomers cease to suffer from 
nostalgia. Money does lie in the streets, despite 
contradiction, for those who know how to pick 
it up; at the end of any thoroughfare a fortune 
may await the bold-hearted. Childe Roland if 
he came to New York would not be heard, so 
many other knights are blowing their horns ; be- 
sides, he would be puzzled to find that Dark 
Tower. Our surfaces are glittering, hard, boast- 
ful; the rhythms of our daily life abrupt, over- 
emphatic. We appear to be seeking some un- 
known goal, as in the streets we seem to be 
running to a fire which we never reach. Al- 
ternately repellent and hypnotic, New York is 
often a more stony-hearted mother than the 
Oxford Street of De Quincey. 

Of course it is money New Yorkers are after, 
that mercenary madness reproved by Europeans 
though indulged in by them on their arrival here 
— also on our arrival in Europe. New York is 
the note dynamic in the world's concert, per- 
haps too much brass and cymbals for the balance 
of the orchestra. But overtones count. We 
sound a few, even if we don't wear our souls on 
our sleeves. It may be the fault of the climate 
and perhaps the fault of the millions of people 
ceded us so freely by Europe; yet the city has a 
soul, even though it is as yet invisible to Euro- 
pean critics. We are not too nice in the conduct 
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NEW PROMENADES 

of a clouded cane, though we make good citizens 
rapidly. The bite of the salt air is responsible 
for our too responsive nerves; sun-bathed half the 
year, our very thoughts are coloured by the sun. 
We may have too much temperament. We are 
more optimistic than London or Paris; optimism 
is our natural vice. As in Paris or London you 
may step aside here from any of the main- 
travelled highways and soon become lost; worse, 
you are forgotten. We have not much time for 
social intercourse — remember, we speak of the 
majority. Individuality is gained, but at the 
loss of many desirable things. That is an old 
joke, though more fact than fiction, about New 
Yorkers living in the same apartment house and 
not discovering until years afterward that they 
are old friends. There is little leisure to culti- 
vate the minor graces. We fly at our music, at 
our theatres and pictures as we fly after a tip on 
stocks. We bolt new ideas and invent new relig- 
ions every season to match the gowns and hats 
of our wives. We swallow Beethoven and cry 
What next? Wagner is speedily engulfed and 
we cry for Richard Strauss, After he has gone 
we try French and Italian sweetmeats. Ibsen 
is an old story, Maeterhnck a mere fable. De- 
bussy begins to tire. What next? There must 
always be a "next" in New York. 

The crowd ever marching on heedless heels 

passes in all its motley. Possibly a man with a 

green face might make it pause, but we doubt it. 

Poor Baudelaire with his hair dyed green would 

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NEW PROMENADES 

not have had a chance. Every nationality on 
the globe traverses our streets — every national- 
ity, with the native-born New Yorker in the 
minority. Are there any more New Yorkers? 
The ItaUan, Slavic, Hebraic types predominate 
where once Irish, German, and American ruled. 

You can't lounge in a treeless city. The in- 
tensity of Hfe, its futile intensity, prevents a man 
from assuming the attitude of a looker on in 
Vienna. We boast no dilettanti. To catch a 
glimpse of one's submerged soul one must enter 
some church where, away from the heat of the 
race, you can overhear yourself. Do I exag- 
gerate? But then every one does in New York. 
It is part of the game to be in a terrible hurry to 
go somewhere, anyv\^here out of the quiet. The 
temper is the ironically gay rather than the 
cheerfully c3Tiical. You see no old women; no 
grandmothers make a sweet picture for tired 
eyes. All the women have grown young; all ex- 
cept the young women. 

There are few timid backwaters left for sen- 
sitive persons who dislike the glare of modern 
traffic — backwaters such as you discern in old 
Chelsea or on the other side of the Seine. Young 
America insists on eating to the accompaniment 
of a brass band and in the open market-place. 
The antique and intimate chop-houses, the half- 
way uptown stopping-off places, the cosey liquid 
life-saving stations have been swept away — 
gone with the crooked streets and beckoning 
trees. The nuance is missing in our crushing life 
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— the nuance which alone makes existence toler- 
able. With an over-developed sense of national 
continuity we assume ourselves to be "Central" 
in the cosmos. Ring us up from Persia and we 
will answer you quicker than a call from Phila- 
delphia; which is a trait of vanity undeniable. 
On the other hand foreign fault-finders no longer 
annoy. We may grumble good-naturedly over 
them, but they are soon forgotten. New York 
is as terrible as an army with banners for the 
man who has the desire of the moth for the mil- 
lionaire. In that she is pragmatic. Work, that 
you may earn money to spend recklessly ! Other- 
wise go your ways. Yet, despite all our hot zest 
in the acquisition of money, who really cares for 
the unimportant millionaire here? An enormous 
fund of indifference exists at the base of the 
local consciousness; at times it borders on in- 
humanity. New York is a Sphinx which always 
asks questions but forgets to listen to the answer. 
The Time Spirit sports the guise of a building 
contractor. In Europe the old humbug and 
Janus-faced illusionist is supposed to be more 
poetic. Hydra-headed is this monster as an 
Asiatic deity, but in America it moulds itself to 
popular opinion instead of controlling it. 

Yes, we lack shadow in our local picture — 
spiritual shadow; though on the physical plane, 
as our theosophical brethren would say, there is 
too much shade — especially in those windy 
downtown borings called streets. We are all 
foreground, without much middle distance and 
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NEW PROMENADES 

hardly any perspective. Our tones are too brill- 
iant, but our national canvas is sound. 

At present our architects have hitched their 
house to a star. They plan upward. They see 
their art as a tower, and a city of towers we are 
bound to become. The leit-motiven of the New 
York architect are wind velocities and bearing 
strains rather than Attic beauty. His head is 
figuratively in the clouds. The ideal building is 
conceived under the rubric of base, shaft, capital; 
in a word, the tower. Our architecture is stately, 
graceful, crazy, and mediocre; but whether Pal- 
ladian or Baroque, or German, English, or French 
Renaissance, modified Gothic or Hke the eclectic 
abbey of Prester John, it is as it must be. A 
hundred styles are in the air clamouring for 
recognition; a reckless architectural imp ro vision, 
heaven-storming at times, evokes the image of a 
demon-Uke Rops's Sower or of that frolicsome 
devil from Madrid called Asmodeus, who stalks 
across the island dropping here a note, there a 
chord, here a scale, there an arpeggio, the full 
fulminating battery; yet when the smoke and 
noise made by his dissonant splinters of tone 
clear away we discern a strange harmony in the 
scattered designs. So it is with our city — ugly, 
heterogeneous, disquieting, and huge. 

And since the foregoing was written, a few 
years ago, what changes ! The Woolworth struct- 
ure, tallest of all; the two magnificent stations 
of the Pennsylvania and New York Central 
railways; the Municipal building; the new Po- 

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NEW PROMENADES 

lice Headquarters; the New, now the Century, 
Theatre; new bridges, new hotels; the night 
skyline, too, how it has altered so that no mu- 
nicipal spectacle in Europe can vie with the 
vast numbers of Hghts atop of hotels, theatres, 
in the parks, on the bridges, and blazing in 
open squares. The Art Museum has a new front- 
age. The obverse side of the picture is the daily 
destruction of venerable buildings, the trans- 
formation of private residences, Hterally palaces, 
into hideous loft buildings, and the consequent 
spoiling of that once royal street. Fifth Avenue, 
now become the strolUng ground for an anony- 
mous herd of toilers from the Old World. 

Notwithstanding its exuberance, its crudities 
and cruelties, this city is the core of the uni- 
verse for those who have once submitted to her 
sorceries. And might not James Russell Lowell 
have meant New York when he sang: 

" Strange new world, that yit wast never young, 
Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains." 

IV 

ENGLISH MASTERS IN THE COLLECTION 
OF JOHN HOWARD McFADDEN 

The psychology of the art collector has been 
studied by great writers from Balzac to Henry 
James. Benvenuto Celhni wrote himself down a 
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virtuoso as well as a scoundrel in his incompara- 
ble memoirs, and we recall a half-forgotten tale 
by PhiKp Hale (not the painter, but the music- 
critic of Boston) in which a sort of Jack the 
Ripper figures as a passionate amateur of art. 
Murder and suicide as fine arts have had their 
possibilities exploited by De Quincey and Robert 
Louis Stevenson. Balzac's collectors are either 
semi-maniacs or demi-idiots; the Frenchman 
always beheved in high lights and heavy shad- 
ows. In the many stories of Mr. James which 
delineate collectors these personages are for the 
most part natural and reasonable. Each one has 
his particular tic, but he does not wear his mania 
abroad. Nevertheless the lover of art is a normal 
being. He should not be classed among those we 
call in America "cranks." If he buys from sheer 
vanity there are worse ways of parting a fool from 
his money. If he collects from sheer love of a 
master, as does nowadays M. Pellerin in Paris, 
or of a period, like Archer M. Huntington, then 
he is to be envied. Such collections as the Mor- 
gan, the Frick, the John G. Johnson are catholic 
in their variety; different schools are represented. 
Such a collection as that of John Howard 
McFadden, of Philadelphia, is small, choice, 
and aims at the assemblage of one school. To 
have succeeded thoroughly in one thing is to 
have achieved success. Mr. McFadden ought 
to be a happy man. He has succeeded in his 
artistic adventure. We once declared, we hope 
not cynically, that in the heart of every collector 
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there might be found a bargain counter. But 
this Philadelphia collector is an exception. 

He Hves in his own gallery, the pictures of 
which are practically scattered over the walls of 
his home facing Rittenhouse Square, and few 
men enjoy the companionship of beloved can- 
vases more than he. We disHke that smug phrase 
of the art dealer who, after showing you some 
sentimental smudge, insinuatingly adds: "Ah! 
Now there's a picture you could Hve with, "mean- 
ing that its poor, puling colour and outlines will 
not offend the eye simply because they make no 
impression upon the retinal memory. Show the 
average potential picture purchaser a strong, a 
mascuHne work of art and he shivers. What, he 
asks himself, that harsh, ugly Manet on my walls, 
hanging near my beloved Bouguereau or my Jules 
Breton? Never! And my new pink draperies — 
the harmony of my drawing-room would be de- 
stroyed for ever. This type of collector is quite 
right in his surmise. Manet, a taste for whom 
is a touchstone for imbeciles, brings a breath of 
fresh air into those abodes of musk-scented art. 
Millet earher in the century aroused the same 
protest. He was too natural and loved powerful 
uneducated shepherds instead of Venuses or 
Madonnas painted in cold cream with a fat vo- 
luptuous brush; or else the eternal tittle-tattle 
anecdotage of the studio genre picture. The im- 
pressionists met with the same reception, and as 
to-day they are already "old hat" the neo- 
impressionists are become the sacrificial goats of 
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contemporary art. The truth is that you can 
live near all good art and literally grow with it 
as you understand and love it. 

Now we do not know whether Mr. McFadden 
cares very much for latter-day manifestations in 
paint, but we assume he does not from the very 
nature of his beautiful collection of English 
masters. He frankly avers that he does not 
understand early Florentine and that there is 
much in Whistler that does not appeal to him. 
Some Celtic blood in him makes him more at 
home with the characters of Sir Walter Scott 
or Sir Joshua Reynolds than with those of 
Dante or Botticelli. So you are not surprised 
to find in his dining-room a famous canvas by 
Turner, the Burning of the House of Parlia- 
ment, which was shown here for a short time at 
the Knoedler Galleries. It is one of the master- 
pieces of the great Englishman and not in his 
rotten-ripe manner; the incandescent conflagra- 
tion, the bridge, the river are in Turner's opu- 
lent vein. How much French impressionism 
owes him, beginning with Monticelli and not yet 
ended, may be noticed in this work. The new 
McFadden Raeburn, dated 1756, is a portrait of 
Master John Campbell of Saddell, a youth said 
to have possessed a genius for lightning calcu- 
lation. Another novelty is a large landscape by 
John Linnell showing a storm about to break over 
a heath ; the lightning zigzags down the threaten- 
ing sky, some belated people accompanied by a 
dog are rushing to shelter, the animal well in 
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NEW PROMENADES 

the van. An honest work of a conscientious 
artist. 

But the Gainsborough landscape in the cen- 
tre of the room is something far better. Char- 
acteristic Gainsborough, it is almost matched in 
interest by George Morland's Manchester Coach, 
though not quite. Miss Nelthorpe and Miss 
West, depicted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, do 
not exhaust the treasures of this room, for over 
a door is a study by Romney of Lady Hamilton, 
one of the many — there are said to be forty-six 
pictures of her — he hastily brushed in, an in- 
spired presentment, not lacking a touch of the 
tragic with the flying locks, eyes dramatically 
upturned, the modelling firm and sweet. We 
have seen other presentments of this friend of 
Nelson, but few more sincere or more skilful. 

Around the halls, which could house a church, 
we note two tall WilHam Dobsons, a Richard 
Wilson, a HfeHke bust portrait of Sir Walter Scott 
by Sir J. Watson Gordon, Romney's John Wes- 
ley, the head and face of whom, with its gentle, 
meek expression, might pass for Abbe Fenelon's; 
a dashing Raeburn, a Lawrence and the portrait 
of Edmund Burke by Reynolds. You encounter 
two David Coxes of fine quality on the way to 
the library, in which latter place you will be em- 
barrassed by riches. There hangs the sumptuous 
Constable entitled The Lock, a glorious reproach 
to certain experts who have labelled an inferior 
copy in this city as a genuine Constable; there 
is an old Crome of rare interest, The Blacksmith 
Shop, near Hingham, Norfolk, exhibited 1808 
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in London. Mrs. Dorothy Champigny-Cres- 
pigny is portrayed by Romney, and there is Lady 
Rodney by Gainsborough, also Mrs. Crouch by 
Romney; Lawrence and Copley are in this mel- 
low concert of singing canvases. And remember, 
in reeling off these names so glibly we do not 
mean the Raeburns, Romneys, Gainsboroughs, 
Lawrences, Sir Joshuas, or Turners of commerce. 
Every example is a masterpiece. Mr. McFadden 
has guarded his Old World prejudice in favour of 
quality over quantity. 

He has converted his drawing-room into a 
portrait gallery, and the presence of a Steinway 
Grand pianoforte suggests the idea of Franz Liszt, 
who once declared that his ambition was to give 
a concert in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, where 
amid the questioning glances of the Da Vinci, the 
Giorgione, the Rembrandt, the Titian, the Paolo 
Veronese, the Raphael, and other miraculous 
creations he would discourse as equally miracu- 
lous music. But in the McFadden gallery a 
pianist would be restricted to playing the music 
of a single school; neither Beethoven, Wagner, 
Chopin, nor Schumann would be wholly appro- 
priate. Rather John Bull, Gray, Byrd, Gibbons, 
Arne, Tallis, Purcell, above all the noble and 
ever-fresh piano music of Handel — the gravely 
graceful dance suites; the menuetto sarabande, 
courante gigue, passacaille, chaconne, allemande, 
and not forgetting the fire-fugue for the Turner 
— would interpret the stately coquetries, the 
delicate attitudes, the delicious archness of these 

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English belles and beaux of by-gone days. 
There are two Hogarths recently acquired, A 
Conversation at Wanstead House, rich and 
slightly sombre in tone, and a portrait group, 
the Fontaine Family. Hoppner is represented 
by the portrait of Miss Stamper and one of his 
wife, that might have been painted yesterday, 
so in the mode is it, with its lyrical blues and 
whites. An unfamiliar master is George Henry 
Harlow (1787-1819), a follower of Sir Thomas, 
but not a slavish one, as the portrait of a mother 
with her children proves. She is a Mrs. Weddell, 
and the picture is extremely brilliant. Lady 
Elband by Raeburn, Lady Belhaven by the 
same. Miss Finch and Miss Nicholl by Romney 
gaze down at you with the veiled vivacity or 
sweet disdain these masters knew the secret of 
imparting to their subjects. But the clou of the 
gathering is Master Bunbury, by Reynolds, a 
masterpiece in miniature, for it is not a large 
canvas, the paint of a lovely richness, the 
theme treated in a human fashion without the 
accustomed rhetoric of the sometimes pompous 
Reynolds. Certainly this time the son stood still 
when Joshua commanded. 



V 

HOW WIDOR PLAYED AT ST. SULPICE 

Of course I don't mean an entire night at 
Maxim's, because the place isn't alive until mid- 
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night. It closes its doors at dawn or mid-day just 
as circumstances order. I was sitting in the par- 
terre at the Grand Opera when Churchill crowded 
past me. His name isn't Churchill, but it will do 
here. He is a young American composer study- 
ing in Paris. He had the orchestral score of La 
Valkyrie under his arm, so I rejoiced when he 
sat beside me. I never knew how absurd Wag- 
ner could be when Gallicised, so naturally enough 
I was thirsty after the curtain fell, leaving 
Brunhilda automatically sleeping on the steam- 
and-fire rocks of Walkuere-Land, with Wotan 
humming sonorously in the middle distance. 
Back of the Opera, just at the junction of the 
streets called Gluck and Halevy, is the Cafe 
Monferino. Therein may be discovered the 
best Pilsner beer in all Paris — this was in 
1896. Naturally I discovered the beer when 
I had been in this delectable town a few hours, 
so I asked Churchill if he was athirst. He said 
he was, and soon the beer of Bohemia was 
before us in big steins. For two hours we 
talked Wagnerian tempi, and it was two hours 
after midnight when we were told that no more 
beer could be procured. 

"Let's go to Maxim's," said Churchill. 

"Any place in Paris," I answered, meaning 
any place where recollections of Wagner could be 
drowned in amber, as is the fly of fable. So we 
drove to the Rue Royale and to Maxim's, which 
is not far from the Place de la Concorde. As we 
forced our powerful personaUties through a mob 
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NEW PROMENADES 

of men, women, waiters, and crashing, furious 
music I said: 

"Lo, art thou in Arcady!" 

Churchill, who knew the place well, soon spied 
a table surrounded by a gang of young fellows 
all yelling: "Constant, Constant!" I wasn't 
foolish enough to fancy that this combination of 
imprecation and cajolement meant an adjective, 
yet I couldn't at first locate Constant. I was 
speedily introduced to six of my countrymen, 
haihng mostly from New York, and after sol- 
emnly bowing and staring suspiciously at their 
friend Churchill, they quite as solemnly shook 
hands one with the other, and yelled in unison: 
"Constant!" And again I rejoiced, for I knew 
in my heart that I had met the right sort. 

Then appeared Constant, known to all good 
Americans, and as he bowed his round, sleek 
head for the order, I tried to untangle the friti- 
lant dehrium about me. In front of me waltzed 
furiously a red-headed woman who looked as if 
Cheret had just thought her out on a big sala- 
cious poster. She sprawled, and she slid in mid- 
air as the Hungarian band played vertiginously. 
The red-headed one had in tow a small fellow 
whose eyes bulged with joy and ambition. He 
possessed the largest lady in the building, and 
what more could one expect? The Hungarian 
band was wonderful. It ripped and buzzed with 
rhythmic rubato rage, and tore Wagner passion 
to tatters. It leered, sang, swooned, sighed, 
snarled, sobbed, and leapt. Its leader, a dark 

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NEW PROMENADES 

gipsy with a wide, bold glance, swayed as he 
smote the strings with his bow, and I was quite 
hurt when he went about afterward, plate in 
hand, collecting thankful francs. At tables sat 
women and men and women. The moral tone 
was scarlet, but the toilettes were admirable. 
Occasionally there strayed in a party of tourists, 
generally British. They fled in a moment if they 
had their women folk with them ; yet I saw noth- 
ing actually objectionable. The whole establish- 
ment simply overflowed with good-humoured 
devilry, and there was that scarlet moral tone; it 
was unmistakably scarlet, and as the night wore 
apace it became a rich carmilion! 

Churchill suddenly cried aloud and our table 
ceased singing. 

''Let's get a room with a piano." 

"Constant, Constant!" we howled, and soon 
the active, indispensable Constant conducted us 
up-stairs to a furnished apartment, in which stood 
a mean-looking upright piano. Beer had become 
a watery nuisance, so champagne was ordered, 
and my voice trembled as I gave the order, for I 
knew Young America in Paris — and we had al- 
ready absorbed enough to float a three-masted 
schooner. Constant left us with a piteous re- 
quest not to awake Napoleon in his stony palace 
across the river, and then Master Churchill, who 
is an organist, sat down to the instrument, and 
without any unnecessary preluding began play- 
ing — what do you suppose? 

Oh, only negro melodies, and those boys 

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started in to sing and dance with frantic and 
national emotion. A bearded fellow, who wore 
his hair and whiskers a la Capoul, sang Irish 
songs with an accent that any song and dance 
comedian of Tony Pastor's would have envied. 
He is a pupil of the Beaux Arts, but it was his 
Saturday night off, and he proposed to spend it 
in American fashion. Two young men students 
at the Sorbonne got together and "said" some 
cold, classic things from Racine, but broke into a 
wild jig when sounded the stirring measures of 
that sweet African lyric, " My Gal, My Gal, I'm 
Goin' for to See." 

We fought double-handed. We improvised 
tugs of war with a richly brocaded table-cloth 
serving as a rope. We galloped, we pranced, and 
we upset furniture, and every time a dark-eyed 
boy said in a fragile voice: " Oh, I want to dance," 
we smothered him in the richly brocaded table- 
cloth. It was not a time for blandishments, but 
the hour for stern, masculine rioting; and ac- 
cordingly we rioted. I have since marvelled at 
the endurance of Churchill who braved the ivory 
teeth and cacophonous bark of a peculiarly evil 
French piano. Once when I asked him to resign 
his post and give my aching fingers a chance he 
refused. But he was pulled from his place and a 
magnum of wine poured down his neck. Then I 
sat down and started, bravely, with a Study of 
Chopin. Darkness supervened, as I was ruth- 
lessly lassoed by that awful avenging table- 
cloth and dragged over the floor by the strong 

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NEW PROMENADES 

arms of seven Americans. I long nursed three 
violet-coloured bruises, a triple testimony to the 
Chopin-hating phalanx of the Beaux Arts and 
Sorbonne. 

We relaxed not for a second in our athletic en- 
deavours to chase merriment around the clock. 
After more big and cold bottles a new psychi- 
cal phase manifested itself. For rage and war's 
alarums was substituted a warm, tender senti- 
mentaHsm. We cried to the very heavens that 
we were all jolly good fellows and that no one 
dared deny. Constant came up a half-dozen 
times to deny it; but corks, crackers, napkins, 
and vocal enthusiasm drove him from the room. 
Only when the two young men from the Sor- 
bonne went out upon the balcony and informed, 
in stentorian tones, the budding dawn and a lot 
of coachmen that France was a poor sort of a 
place and America God's own country, then did 
the counsels of the trusty Constant prevail and 
order temporarily restored. But the glimpse of 
awkward dayhght told on our nocturnal nerves. 
Our inspiration flagged and a beer thirst set in, 
and beer meant dissolution; some among us 
were no lovers of the fruit which grows in brew- 
eries; besides the pace began to tell. Our maes- 
tro Churchill came to the rescue. Drinking a 
celery glassful of wine he sat down at the Httle 
dog-house — I mean the piano — and began 
with deep feeling those mystically intense meas- 
ures of the prelude to Tristan and Isolde. An- 
other psychical storm arose. The jesting, hulla- 
213 



NEW PROMENADES 

balooing, rough horseplay ceased, and a genuine 
dehrium set in. Wagner's music is for some peo- 
ple emotional catnip at times. These boys 
wriggled and chanted, and enjoyed to the full 
the opium-charged harmonies. 

Wagner was our Waterloo. 

Maxim will stand anything but Wagner. 
Churchill proved a master trance-medium, and 
as six o'clock sounded we tumbled down-stairs 
and into the daylight. Eight American citizens 
bhnked like owls and a half-hundred coachmen 
hovered about them. It was a lovely Sunday 
morning. Huge blocks of sunlight, fanned by 
soft breezes, slanted up the Rue Royale from the 
Place de la Concorde. A soHtary woman stood in 
the shadow of a doorway. Her elaborate hat, full 
of fantastic dream-flowers, threw her face into 
shade. Her costume was rich, her style Parisian. 
She stood in shadow and waited. Her eyes 
were black wells of regard and her mouth sullen, 
cruel, crimson. Her jaw was animal and I faintly 
recalled the curious countenance with its blend- 
ing of two races. (Ah! how sinister this sounded 
ten years ago.) 

"It is the Morocco Woman," said one of the 
boys. 

It is the "Woman from Morocco," they all re- 
peated shudderingly and we moved across the 
street. I never discovered who she was, this 
mysterious and sinister Woman of Morocco. 
(Probably some bonne going to church.) 

After two of the crowd narrowly escaped arrest 
for trying to steal a sentry-box we tumbled into 
214 



NEW PROMENADES 

a carriage and told the driver to seek for beer, 
anywhere, any place, at any cost, beer. The 
Madeleine looked grey and classically disdain- 
ful as we turned into the Grand Boulevard, and 
in the full current of the sunshine we hfted up 
our voices on the summer air and told all Paris 
how happy were we. At Julian's we stopped. 
Up two heavily carpeted flights of stairs we 
travelled to find only banality. There were a 
few belated night-hawks who preened as we 
entered, but we were Sons of Morning and sought 
not the Aviaries of the Night. No beer, but lots 
of coffee. Of course we scorned such chicory 
advances and once more reached the open after 
numerous expostulations. Our coachman, who 
had been with us since we left the Cafe Mon- 
ferino, began to show signs of wear and tear. 
He had had a drink every quarter of the hour. 
Yet did he not weaken, only whispered to me 
that every place except the churches was bolted, 
and this too, despite the fact that the name of 
Raines had not been heard in the land. We had 
melted from eight to six not absolutely reliable 
persons, so we hated to give in. After some 
meditation the coachman called out encourag- 
ing words to his rusty old horse and then I lost 
my bearings, for we drove up side streets, into 
back alleys leading into other back alleys, down 
tortured defiles and into empty, open, clattering 
squares. At last we reached a cafe bearing in its 
fore-front the information that the establish- 
ment was a rendezvous for coachmen. 

Alas! it was too late to pick our company; be- 

215 



NEW PROMENADES 

sides, our withers were still unwrung and the 
general sentiment of the crowd was that to the 
devil justly belonged the hindmost. We pell- 
melled into the building and found, indeed, a 
choice gathering. Coachmen, cocottes, broken- 
down English and Americans, the rag-tag and 
bob-tail, the veriest refuse of Parisian humanity 
found we, and our entrance was received with a 
shout. Degraded Paris knew a "good thing" 
when it hove into view. We looked like a 
" good thing," but we weren't; we were quite 
exclusive. After we had treated every lost soul 
in the place twice over we sobered up, and one 
scion of America made the original remark: 

"I never knew that Paris held so many thirsty 
people before." 

I don't believe that it ever did, so we manfully 
squared financial matters, and after fighting off 
the preluding of twenty-nine awful persons we 
escaped out of doors. There our coachman, who 
had succumbed, introduced us to an old boot- 
black from Burgundy, who had wept, laughed, 
and fought with the First Consul. We believed 
all he said for ten centimes, and with another 
View Hallo! drove down an anonymous alley, 
cheered to the zenith by the most awful crew of 
blackguards ever dreamed of by Balzac. But 
the sun set us thinking of life and its duties. 
One man spoke of his mother, another of a break- 
fast with an impossible cousin. Then Churchill 
reminded me of an engagement that I seemed to 
have made years ago. It was relative to hearing 
216 



NEW PROMENADES 

the great organist, Widor, play at St. Sulpice 
and at the eleven o'clock service that very day. 
It was only eight o'clock and of course it was an 
easy engagement to keep. Churchill left us and 
I was foohsh enough to say that I had a letter of 
introduction in my pocket to a young American 
architect living in the Latin Quarter. 

"Name, name!" was cried. I gave it, and a 
roar was the response. 

**Why didn't you say so before? He lives in 
our house. We'll drive there at once." We did. 

Never to my dying day shall I forget that in- 
troduction. We were five strong, and there hved 
on the fifth floor of the apartment to which I was 
escorted about sixteen young architects. I can 
swear positively that two young men bearing the 
same name as my letter of introduction arose to 
salute me, although the crowd only spoke of one 
person. Perhaps it was the result of atmospheric 
refraction, some beery Parisian mirage. The 
devils in whose company I found myself went 
from bed to bed shouting: 

"Hello, old son, here is a man from New York 
with a letter from your brother," and many pairs 
of pajamas got out of drugged slumber bowing 
sleepily but politely. 

All lovely things must end, and soon I found 
myself in front of the Gare Montparnasse, talk- 
ing to a trainman about comparative wage-earn- 
ing in Paris and Philadelphia, and then I hailed 
a carriage and drove across the river to the Cafe 
Pilsen, for I was thirsty and the day still young. 
217 



NEW PROMENADES 

The cafe was closed, and I suddenly remembered 
that engagement to hear Widor. My watch told 
me of two hours in which to dress and furbish 
up my morals. Home I went and took a short 
nap, for I had made up my mind to hear the 
great Widor at St. Sulpice. Then I awoke with 
a guilty tongue and a furred conscience. It was 
quite dark and eleven o'clock precisely. 

But just twelve hours too late for Widor, and 
I was hungry, and I went forth into the night 
blinking with the lights of cabs, and as I ate I 
regretted exceedingly the engagement I had 
missed with Churchill, and I regretted, exceed- 
ingly, not having heard the Great Widor of St. 
Sulpice. 



218 



VIII 
THE CELTIC AWAKENING 



IRELAND 

"Ireland, oh Ireland! Centre of my longings, 
Country of my fathers, home of my heart! 
Over seas you call me: Why an exile from me? 
Wherefore sea-severed, long leagues apart ? 

"As the shining salmon, homeless in the sea depths. 
Hears the river call him, scents out the land, 
Leaps and rejoices in the meeting of the waters, 
Breasts weir and torrent, nests him in the sand; 

"Lives there and loves, yet, with the year's returning, 
Rusting in the river, pines for the sea. 
Sweeps bacli again to the ripple of the tideway, 
Roamer of the waters, vagabond and free. 

"Wanderer am I like the salmon of the rivers; 
London is my ocean, murmurous and deep, 
Tossing and vast; yet through the roar of London 
Comes to me thy summons, calls me in sleep. 

"Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers, 
Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart. 
Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings, 
Keep me in remembrance, long leagues apart." 

— Stephen Gwynn. 



How dewy is the freshness and exquisite 
flavour of the newer Celtic poetry, from the more 
ambitious thunders of its epics to its tenderest 
219 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

lyric leafage ! It has been a veritable renascence. 
Simultaneously, there burst forth throughout Ire- 
land a trilling of birdhke notes never before 
heard, and the choir has become more compact 
and augmented. Fiona Macleod told in luscious, 
melting prose her haunting tales; beautiful Dora 
Sigerson sang of the roses that fade; Katharine 
Tynan-Hinkson achieved at a bound the spun 
sweetness of music in her Larks. 

"I saw no staircase winding, winding, 
Up in the dazzle, sapphire and binding, 
Yet round by round, in exquisite air, 
The song went up the stair." 

A pure ravishment of the ear this lyric. 
Lionel Johnson, an Irish Wordsworth, intoned 
graver harmonies; Nora Hopper caught the lilt 
of the folk on the hillside with her Fairy Fiddler; 
Douglas Hyde, a giant in learning, fearlessly 
wrote his poems in Erse, challenging with their 
sturdy splendour the ancient sagas; George 
Moore made plays with W. B. Yeats; Edward 
Martyn his Maieve, Heather Field; Mr. Yeats 
his Countess Cathleen ; Fiona Macleod The Hour 
of Beauty, and Alice Milligan a piece founded on 
the stirring adventures of Diarmuid and Grania. 

Some English critics who went over to Dublin 
were amazed at the many beauties of this new 
literature, a literature rooted in the vast, im- 
memorial Volkslied of Erin. Then Lady Greg- 
ory published her translation of Cuchullain of 
Muirthemne, and we saw that as Wagner sought 
220 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

for rejuvenation of the music-drama in the 
Icelandic sagas, so these young Irishmen, en- 
thusiastically bent upon recreating a national 
literature, went to the very living sources, the 
poetic *' meeting of the waters," for their inspira- 
tion. Dr. Douglas Hyde was, and is, the very 
protagonist of the movement, though its be- 
ginnings may be detected in the dark, moody 
lyrics of James Clarence Mangan, in the classic 
lines of Wilham Allingham. 

Matthew Arnold spoke of the "Celtic natural 
magic" inherent in the great poetry of England. 
Here we get it in all its sad and sunny perfec- 
tions from the woodnote wild of Moira O'Neill 
to the beautiful phrases of Yeats. The Celt and 
the Sarmatian are alike in their despairing pa- 
triotism, their preference for the melancholy 
minor scale of emotion, their sudden alternations 
of sorrow and gayety, defiance and despair. 
And the Irishman, like the Polish man, is often 
merry at heart even when his song has cadences 
dripping with mournfulness. We hear it in the 
Chopin mazurkas, the really representative music 
of Chopin, and we hear it in those doleful tunes 
sung by the Irish peasantry. Even their ex- 
pressive "keening," touching, as it does, the 
rock-bed of earthly calamity, can be turned to a 
rolHcking lay with a mere inflection. The Slav 
and Celt are alike — they fall from heaven to 
hell in a moment, though they always live to tell 
the tale. 

What Celt whose feet are set in alien streets 

221 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

can hear unmoved the plaintive Corrymeela of 
Moira O'Neill? 

"Over here in England, I'm helpin' wi' the hay 
An' I wisht I was in Ireland the Hvelong day; 
Weary on the English hay, an' sorra take the wheat! 
Ochl Corrymeela an' the blue sky over it." 

And the singer varies the refrain with "Corry- 
meela an' the low south wind," "Sweet Corry- 
meela an' the same soft rain," until you feel the 
heart-throb of the lonely exile, and Corrymeela 
with its patch of blue sky, out of which the Irish 
rain pours — for even the rain is witty in Ire- 
land — becomes the one desirable spot on the 
globe. Here is a veritable poetic counterblast to 
Robert Browning's "Oh, to be in England, now 
that April's there." 

And "A. E.," who is George W. Russell in the 
flesh — what a flame-like spirit, a pantheist who 
adores Dana the mother of the gods with the 
consiuning ardour of a Roman CathoHc before 
the image of Our Lady. He can sing: 

"In the dusk silver sweet, 
Down the violet-scented ways 
As I moved with quiet feet 
I was met by mighty days." 

And you hear as in a murmuring shell the 
music of Keats, Verlaine, and — Ireland. Rus- 
sell is a true poet. 

This same Celtic melancholy, with an heroic 
quality rare since the legendary days and all 

222 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

welded into music, lyric, symphonic, and dra- 
matic, is to be found in the work of William 
Butler Yeats. From the Wind Among the Reeds 
to The Seven Woods, from the Wanderings of 
Oisin — incomparable in its lulling music, truly 
music that like Oisin's eyes is "dull with the 
smoke of their dreams" — to that touching 
Morality, The Hour Glass — all of Mr. Yeats's 
poems and plays create the feeling that we are in 
the presence of a singer whose voice and vision 
are new, whose voice and vision are commensu- 
rate with the themes he chants. Above all he 
arouses the image in us of a window, like Keats's 
magic casement opening upon perilous seas and 
strange vistas wherein may be discovered the 
cloudy figures of Deirdre, Dana, Cuchullain, 
Diarmuid, and Grania; Bran moves lazily in 
the mist, and in the threatening storm-clouds we 
see the dim shape of Aoife, the best beloved 
woman of that mighty chieftain Cuchullain, who 
slew the son of her body and his own loins. This 
window is the poet's own ; it commands his par- 
ticular domain in the land of dreams ; and what 
more dare we ask of a poet than the sharing of 
his vision, the sound of his voice? 

The esoteric quality of Yeats comes out more 
strongly in the prose stories. A mystic, with 
all a mystic's sense of reality — Huysmans de- 
clares that the mystic is the most practical per- 
son alive — Yeats has dived deeply into the 
writings of the exalted, from Joachim of Flora to 
Jacob Boehme, from St. Teresa to William Blake. 
223 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

We recall several of his tales, particularly The 
Tables of the Law, Rosa Alchemica, The Bind- 
ing of the Hair. Especially notable are his con- 
tributions to Blake criticism, so rare that Charles 
Algernon Swinburne alone preceded him in the 
field. 

Nor shall we soon forget the two poems in 
Windle Straws, or the rhythmic magnificence of 
The Shadowy Horses: "I hear the shadowy 
horses, their long manes a-shake, their hoofs 
heavy with tumults, their eyes glimmering 
white"; or the half-hidden charm of O'SulHvan 
Rua to the Secret Rose. Pagan? Yes, pagan all 
of them in their keen devotion to sky and water, 
grass and brown Mother Earth. Yeats seems to 
be uttering one long chant of regret for the van- 
ished gods, though like Heinrich Heine, his gods 
are but "in exile." They peep from behind the 
bulrush and timorously hide in the calyx of the 
flower; they are everywhere, in the folds of the 
garrulous old woman, in the love-light of the 
girl's black eyes. Ireland is fairly paved with 
fairies, and Yeats tells us of them in his sweet, 
languorous poetic speech. 

One is struck not so much with the breadth of 
his work as with its depth and intensity. The 
Celt is narrow at times — but he touches the 
far stars, though his feet are plunged in the black 
waters of the bogs. The vision of Yeats ap- 
proaches more nearly that of a seer. He sees 
visions. He is exalted by the sight of the fringe 
on some wandering god's garment. And he re- 
224 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

lates to us in naive accents his fear and his 
joy at the privilege. After a carnival of Realism, 
when the master-materiahsts were defining the 
limits of space, when Matter and Force were 
crowned on the throne of reason, suddenly comes 
this awakening of the spiritual, comes first to 
Belgium, spreads to France, then to Ireland. 
After solid brick and mortar — to quote Arthur 
Symons — the dreams multi-coloured and tragic 
of poets! It has been called pre-Raphaelism, 
symbolism, neo-Catholicism, and what not — 
it is but the human heart crying for other and 
more spiritual fare than the hard bread of reality. 

The Irish Independent Theatre has its literary 
organs in Beltaine, in Samhain, and other publi- 
cations edited by Mr. Yeats. Therein one learns 
of its ideals, of its accomplished work. The 
Countess Cathleen was first acted in 1899 at the 
Antient Concert Rooms in Dubhn. Mr. Mar- 
tyn's The Heather Field and Mr. Moore's ad- 
mirable play The Bending of the Bough, and 
Mr. Yeats's Diarmuid and Grania, were, with 
plays by Dr. Hyde and several others, success- 
fully produced. 

Yeats says: "Our daily Hfe has fallen among 
prosaic things and ignoble things, but our dreams 
remember the enchanted valleys." He remem- 
bers his dreams, tenuous as they sometimes are, 
and many of them troubled. As he has grown, 
the contours of his work are firmer, the content 
weightier. A comparison of The Land of Heart's 
Desire and On Baile's Strand will prove this. 
225 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

One is the stuff out of which visions are woven; 
the other, despite its shght resemblances to 
Maeterlinck — notably at the close, when the 
fool tells the bUnd man of the drama — is of 
heroic mould. The mad king thrusting and 
slashing at the tumbling breakers, after he has 
discovered that he has slain his own son, is a 
figure of antique and tragic stature. We hear 
more of the musician, the folk-lorist, the brooding 
Rosicrucian — is Yeats not his own Michael 
Robartes? — in the earlier verse; but in this 
image of hero and king quite as insane as Xerxes 
and Canute, we begin to feel the dramatic poten- 
tiality of the young Irish poet. In The Hour 
Glass there is a note of faith hitherto absent. 

The artistic creeds of Mr. Yeats are clearly 
formulated in his collection of prose essays, 
Ideas of Good and Evil — a very Nietzsche-like 
title. In this book Blake and Nietzsche are hap- 
pily compared. We learn what he thinks of the 
theatre, of the Celtic elements in literature, of 
"the emotion of multitude," and there is a 
record of the good work of Mr. Benson and his 
company at Stratford-on-Avon. One idea, 
among a thousand others, is worthy of quotation. 
In speaking of Matthew Arnold and his phrase, 
**the natural magic of the Celt," Mr. Yeats 
writes: "I do not think he understood that our 
'natural magic' is but the ancient worship of 
nature and that troubled ecstasy before her, that 
certainty of all beautiful places being haunted, 
which is brought into men's minds." The thirst 
226 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

for the unfounded emotion and a wild melancholy 
are troublesome things in this world, sighs the 
poet. 

He believes that France has everything of 
high literature except the emotion of multitude, 
the quality we find in the Greek plays with their 
chorus. The Shakespearian drama gets the 
emotion of multitude out of the sub-plot, which 
copies the main plot. Ibsen and Maeterlinck 
get it by creating a new form, **for they get mul- 
titude from the Wild Duck in the attic, or from 
the Crown at the bottom of the Fountain, vague 
symbols that set the mind wandering from idea 
to emotion, emotion to emotion." Mr. Yeats 
finds French dramatic poetry too rhetorical — 
"rhetoric is the will trying to do the work of the 
imagination" — and the French play too logical, 
too well ordered. 

It is dramatic technique, however, that counts 
in the construction of a play. All the imagina- 
tion in the world, all the poetic dreams, are 
naught if the architectural quantity be left out. 
I find Mr. Yeats's plays full of the impalpable 
charm — he almost makes the invisible visible ! 
— we catch in Chopin, Chopin in one of his 
evanescent secret moods. But place these shapes 
of beauty out from the dusk of dreams, place 
them before " the fire of the footlights," and they 
waver and evaporate. Mr. Yeats and his as- 
sociates must carve their creations from harder 
material than lovely words, lovely dreams. To 
be beautiful upon the stage, with a spiritual 
227 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

beauty, is a terrible, a brave undertaking. 
Maeterlinck dared to be so; so did Ibsen — 
though his is the beauty of characterisation. 
Mr, Yeats would mould from the mist his 
humans. In the acted drama this is impossi- 
ble. Shakespeare himself did not accomplish 
the feat, because, being in all matters a realist, 
a practical man of the theatre, he did not at- 
tempt it. His dreams are always realised. 

Mr. William Archer has written of the move- 
ment: "The Irish drama possesses a true and 
— why should we shrink the word — a great poet 
in Mr. Yeats; but as yet it has given us only 
dramatic sketches — no thought-out picture 
with composition and depth in it. . . . The char- 
acters stand on one plane, as it were on the shal- 
low stage, always in a more or less irregular row, 
never in an elaborate group. The incidents 
succeed one another in careful and logical gra- 
dation, but have no complexity of interrelation. 
They form a series, not a system." 

JOHN M. SYNGE 

The early death of a lyric poet is not a loss 
without compensation, for birds sing sweetest 
when young; but with a dramatic poet the case 
is altered. Perhaps Keats and Shelley would 
have given the world profounder music, music 
with fundamental harmonies; we are rich with 
the legacies they left. The deaths of Schubert 
and Chopin may not have been, for the same 
228 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

reason, such irreparable misfortunes. The dis- 
appearance of John M. Synge from the map of 
life ten years earlier would have spelled nothing 
to the world, his death ten years hence might 
have found us in possession of half a dozen 
greater plays than the slim sheaf of six he left 
us when he passed away a few weeks ago at 
Dublin. A dramatist must know life as well as 
art: those "little mirrors of sincerity" which are 
the heart of the lyricist must in a play mirror the 
life exterior before they can stir us to the core. 
Life, life felt and seen and sung, these are the 
true architectonics of great drama; all the rest 
is stagecraft. Now John Synge was a poet who 
spoke in clear, rich-fibred prose. The eternal 
wanderlust that was in men like Bamfylde- 
Moore Carew and George Borrow also stung 
the blood of Synge. He had the gipsy scholar 
temperament. He went about France and Ger- 
many, and in his beloved Aran Islands his fiddle 
was the friend of the half-wild peasantry. He 
was not thirty-eight when he died, yet he left 
behind him the sound of his voice, the voice of a 
large, sane soul — both the soul of a dreamer and 
the man of action who is the dramatist. His 
taking off before his prime means much to Irish 
literature, though happily his few days suffice 
for the consecration of his genius. 

The chemistry which transmuted experience 

into art wiU doubtless be analysed by his future 

biographers. His life was simple — simplicity 

was the key-note of the man. He loved litera- 

229 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

ture, but he loved life better. He was not of the 
decadent temperament; he was too robust of 
body and spirit to be melancholy, nor did he 
ever, on the absinthe slopes of Montmartre, 
grasp for the laurels of the "moderns." His 
friend Yeats has written: ''Synge was essen- 
tially an orderly man with unlimited indul- 
gence for the disorderly." He did contemplate 
a career devoted to criticism. His favour- 
ite French writer was Racine — we are far re- 
moved here from the decadence — but luckily 
Yeats persuaded his young countryman to re- 
turn to Ireland, there to write of the people and 
the land from which he sprang. Seldom has 
advice borne better results. Synge went to the 
Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway, and in a 
book of rare interest and vast naivete gave us a 
series of pictures that may be considered the 
primal sketches for his plays. Though The Aran 
Islands was published in 1907 it is a record dating 
back several years. Over the Western country 
he went afoot, living in the cabins, talking by 
the wayside with the old men and the girls, and 
drawing his bow for the couples dancing. He 
loved the people, and his eye was not the meas- 
uring eye of the surgeons we expect from novel- 
ists and dramatists. 

Synge was neither a symbolist nor a man with 
a message. His symbols are the sea, the sky, and 
the humans who lead the hard, bitter lives of a 
half-ruined land, bankrupt of nearly all else ex- 
cept its dreams. Your reformer who puts plays 
230 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

on the stage to prove something is only half an 
artist, no matter what his wit or the justice of 
his cause. 

But in the Synge plays "sweet Corrymeela an' 
the same soft rain" does not interest him as do 
the words of the headstrong girl by the hedge 
who wants to marry the tinker; or the blind pair 
of tramps whose vision returns and with their 
sight a hell of disappointment; or the passionate 
woman of the glen, whistling for her lover, or the 
riders to the sea, scooper of graves. Human 
emotions, the more elemental the better, are 
for Synge the subject-matter of his cameo 
carved work. He is mindful of technique; he 
learned the art in France; he can fashion a 
climax with the best of them. There are no 
loose ends. His story moves from the first to 
the last speech. Eminently for the footlights, 
these tiny dramas may be read without losing 
their essential thrill. Beauty and terror within 
the frame of homely speech and homely actions 
are never lost sight of; and what different men 
and women are Synge's when compared to the 
traditional stage Irishmen of Carleton, Lover, 
Lever, Boucicault, and a hundred others. Yet 
the roaring, drinking, love-making broth of a 
boy hasn't changed. He may be found in Synge, 
but he is presented without the romantic senti- 
mental twist. 

Perhaps the picture may be unflattering, but 
it is a truer picture than the older. The Playboy 
of the Western World was hissed at Dublin, and 
231 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

New York, and harshly arraigned by press and 
public. The Irish never could stand criticism. 
The very same element here which protests 
against the caricatured Celt in comedy and vaude- 
ville, and with just cause, would probably attack 
Synge's plays as unpatriotically slanderous. Cer- 
tainly, this dramatist does ^not attenuate the 
superstition, savagery, ignorance, drunkenness, 
and debasement of the peasantry in certain sec- 
tions of Ireland. His colours, however, are not 
laid on coarsely, as if with a Zola brush. There 
is an eternal something in the Celt that keeps him 
from reaching the brute. Possibly the New 
Irishman does not differ at base from his fore- 
bears, but he is a shade sadder ; he is not as rol- 
licking as the gossoons of Carleton. His virtues 
are celebrated by Synge; his pessimism, which 
is ever tipped on its edges by an ineluctable 
hope for better times; his confirmed behef in 
the marvellous, his idolatry of personal prowess, 
his bravery, generosity, hot heart, and witty 
speech — all these quahties are not by any 
means missing in the plays. Indeed, they loom 
large. All Ireland is not the province of Synge. 
He has only fenced off certain tracts of the west- 
ern coast — the east as well in The Well of the 
Saints — the coast of Mayo and a glen in County 
Wicklow. If he had Hved he might have de- 
scribed with the same vitality and vivacity the 
man who walks in Phoenix Park, or the people 
of Donegal, "the far down." Judging from his 
own unpleasant experiences in Dublin he could 
232 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

have echoed Charles Lever, who once sang of 
his country folk as: 

" Fightin' like divils for conciliation, 
An' hatin' each other for the love of God." 

"These people make no distinction between 
the natural and the supernatural," wrote Synge 
in his Aran Islands. Nor do the characters of his 
plays. Technically buttressed as they are at 
every point, the skeleton cleanly articulated, 
nevertheless the major impression they convey 
is atmospheric. Real people pass before your 
eyes; there is not the remote and slowly moving 
antique tapestry, as in the Maeterlinck or Yeats 
fantasies. Stout-built lads whack their father, 
or the tinker and his trull knock over the priest: 
there is loud talk and drink and bold actions ; but 
the magic of the Celt envelops all. This is more 
notable in Riders to the Sea, which has a 
Maeterlinckian touch — the modulation of the 
suspicion of death into its culminating terrors; 
but it is Irish. It is Synge. What could be more 
Irish than the last speech of Maurya, the mother 
bereaved by the greedy sea of her husband and 
sons: "No man at aU can be living forever; 
and we must be satisfied." The very pith of 
Celtic fatahsm! The grim humour of the sup- 
posed dead man in The Shadow of the Glen is 
Irish too; and also the tramp who fills the ears 
of the banished wife with his weaving eloquence. 
She goes with him into the wet and wind of the 
night, knowing that a "grand morning" will 

233 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

surely follow. This humour is pervasive and 
does not reveal itself in the lightning flash of 
epigram. It is the same with the tender poetry 
that informs Synge's rhythmic prose. His dia- 
logue goes to a tune of its own, a tune in the web 
of which music and meaning are closely spun in 
the same skein, while beneath hums the sad 
diapason of humanity. 

Consider the speeches in The Playboy of the 
Western World, the most important of the 
dramas. Each line is illuminating. Such con- 
cision is refreshing. Character emerges from 
both phrase and situation. This play, while 
it is not so shudder-breeding as Riders to the 
Sea, is more universal in interest. Christy 
Mahon, the young hero who is not heroic, is an 
Irish Peer Gynt. He lies that he may create the 
illusion of heroism; a liar of the breed artistic. 
He boasts of murdering his father (didn't the 
cultivated Charles Baudelaire actually boast the 
same noble deed?) for he knows the simple folk 
will regard him with mingled horror and admira- 
tion. The two rivals for his love, Pegeen Mike 
and the Widow Quin, are etched by the needle 
of a master; the fierce, passionate girl is real, but 
the cunning widow is dehghtful comedy. She 
crosses the page or the footlights and you touch 
her flattering hand, hear her blarneying voice. 
The minor characters are excellent, and they are 
subtly disposed on the various planes of interest 
and action. The piece moves briskly or lan- 
guidly, the varying lines fit each human with 

234 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

consummate appropriateness. The story itself 
is as old as Troy, as is also the theme of The Well 
of the Saints. Synge is never esoteric. His 
argument never leaves the earth, yet few dram- 
atists evoke such a sense of the Beyond. He 
is a seer as well as a manipulator of comedy. 
The vigorous sketch of his head by John B. 
Yeats (prefacing The Playboy of the Western 
World) shows us a fine strong profile, a big brow, 
and the gaze of the dreamer, but a dreamer for 
whom the \'isible world existed. "The S>Tiges 
are strong," answered a relative to the inquiry: 
"Was J. M. SjTige's death hastened by the hos- 
tile reception accorded his play in Dubhn?" It 
was not. His view of life was too philosophical 
for criticism to hurt; he had the objective tem- 
perament of the dramatist, the painter of 
manners, the psychologist. Nearing the matu- 
rity of his splendid powers, on the threshold of a 
love marriage, he disappeared like the mist on 
one of his fairy-haunted hills. But the real John 
Synge mil endure in his plays. 

A POET OF VISIONS 

William Butler Yeats is a young man — he 
was born at Dubhn, June, 1865 — but he is 
already famous, and for those who only know of 
his name through Dame Rumour's trumpet his 
fame will be further assured by the sight of his 
collected works in prose and verse, eight vol- 
umes long, pubhshed at the Shakespeare Head 

235 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

Press, Stratford-on-Avon. Mr. Bullin has spared 
no pains to make these substantial volumes 
agreeable to eye and touch ; quarter vellum backs 
and gray linen sides, bold, clear type, and paper 
light in weight. The price, too, is not pro- 
hibitive for the collector. A bibliography of the 
various editions, English, American — Mr. John 
Quinn has privately printed many plays of 
Yeats in New York — is all that could be de- 
sired. The poet is pictured in frontispiece by 
such artists as John S. Sargent, Mancini, Charles 
Shannon, and by his father, John Butler Yeats; 
the reproductions are excellent. Volume I con- 
tains the Sargent head, from a charcoal drawing, 
the original in the possession of Mr. Quinn. It 
is Yeats seen by Sargent and definitely set forth 
in the terms of the Sargent daylight prose — a 
young man wearing a Byronic collar, the sil- 
houette as firm as iron, the eyes in the shadow of 
the heavy overhanging hair. A splendid bit of 
modelHng, yet not the essential Yeats, who is 
nocturnal, or trembling on the edges of the 
twilight or dawn. Volume III shows us Charles 
Shannon's conception : a three-quarter view, the 
cerebral region markedly accentuated, the ex- 
pression contemplative. A vital rendering. 
The Mancini drawing in volume V looks like an 
improvisation by the brilliant Italian colourist on 
themes from Yeatsian moods. The poet faces 
you, he wears glasses, his eyes are almost ef- 
faced, his mouth is quizzical; he is perhaps look- 
ing at Celtic hats conversing with the dhouls of 
236 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

midnight on some cosmical back-fence. We like 
the drawing of the elder Yeats prefacing volume 
VII; it is the poet Yeats of Rosa Alchemica, 
and the Tables of the Law; Yeats the student 
of the Rosy Cross, the mystic Yeats of 1896, 
who, immersed in the occultism of the Orient, 
was peering through the mists of Erin in search 
of a s3anbol to fully express his love for her. He 
is a trifle uncanny, a dweller on the threshold, 
and for us nearer the real Yeats than the other 
presentations. In this instance blood tells the 
tale, notwithstanding the glory that is Sargent's, 
that is Shannon's, that is Mancini's. One fact, 
however, stares you in the face: all four artists 
have seen their subject as he is, an authentic 
poet. His gamut is one of fantasy; he is less at 
ease among the sonorous sagas than amid the 
fantasy of misty mountains, bracken lights and 
the sound of falling waters. 

The bibHography tells us that Mosada, a 
dramatic poem, was the first published work. 
It was reprinted in 1886 from the Dubhn Uni- 
versity Review, and in company with other poems, 
plays, and prose does not appear in the definitive 
edition; among other omissions we note The 
Pot of Broth. Yeats has the courage of a sur- 
geon. Does he sing at the beginning of the 
bibliography : 

" Accursed who brings to light of day 
The writings I have cast away! 
But blessed he that stirs them not 
And lets the kind worms take the lot! " 

237 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

What a motto for all writers! The various 
volumes are about equally divided between 
verse and prose, and we do not pretend to assert 
that the interest is unflaggingly maintained. 
For the last ten years the poet has been doubled 
by a propagandist, and in the too few intervals 
left the latter the dramatist began to bud. The 
neo-Irish literary movement, literally a cry of 
back to the people, back to the soil, back to the 
GaeHc myths, is now history. Suddenly the 
sleepy old city on the River Liffey became the 
centre of a poetic renascence, a renascence of 
wonder, as Theodore Watts-Dunton would say. 
Further, the spirit of Paris, of the romanticism 
of 1830, invaded Dublin. Several Yeats plays 
were placed under the ban of public displeasure. 
Countess Cathleen for one; as for J. M. Synge, 
it was a case for the poHce when his Playboy of 
the Western World was produced. (Mr. Yeats 
assures us that there were 500 at the second 
performance.) Evidently Dublin awoke to the 
knowledge that a new art was being born and 
that the travail was not without its pangs. 

Yeats has been at both the centre and cir- 
cumference of this artistic wheel, the hub of 
which is unquestionably Dr. Douglas Hyde. 
With such colleagues as Lady Gregory, the late 
Synge, Russell ("iE") Martyn, George Moore, 
Father Peter O'Leary, and a host of other 
writers, playwrights, poets, critics, the experi- 
ments in the smaller auditoriums and at the 
Abbey Theatre attracted the attention of not 
238 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

only England but of the world. How much the 
lyric poet who is William Butler Yeats has lost 
or gained by his devotion to what seemed a hope- 
less dream we dare not say, but after rereading 
his collected works one may not doubt as to 
their contemporary importance and future per- 
manency. The rich undertones of The Wind 
Among the Reeds, full at moments as are those 
songs of the echoes of the dead poets, are the 
key-notes after all of the later Yeats. He is 
always following a vision or hearing a voice, a 
"sweet everlasting voice," hearing "the Shad- 
owy Horses, their long manes a-shake." These 
songs he perhaps thinks shght and dim to-day, 
but they are not. They are redolent of wind 
and sky and the souls of the forgotten things far 
away and the desire for the dead women with 
locks of gold and the terrible war that is to be 
waged in the valley of the Black Pig, where all 
will bow down to the "Master of the still stars 
and the flaming door." There is less meta- 
physics, too, in the early verse. Often we feel 
the weight of the cerebral whiplash in his later 
verse; also the tones of sophistication. In the 
Seven Woods holds such jewels as The Folly of 
Being Comforted, Never Give All the Heart, 
and that lovely The Hollow Wood, with its 
EHzabethan Hit, "O hurry to the water amid the 
trees, for there the tall tree and his Leman sigh." 
And "O do not love too long" — has the poet 
ever since recaptured such tender, plaintive 
notes? Youth is a time for living and singing 

239 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

and loving, and a poet is not young forever. 
The pipe of Yeats may not compass the octave; 
but his pipe is pure, its veiled tones hide the 
magic of the Celt. 

We need not dwell now on The Wanderings 
of Oisin, with the stern responses of St. Patric; 
or on the Fenians, or those whose eyes were "dull 
with the smoke of their dreams," a little epic of 
disenchantment of the vanished pagan gods. 
In volume II will be found the four favourite 
plays: The King's Threshold, On Baile's Strand, 
Deirdre, and The Shadowy Waters. They are 
known to American readers. While they do not 
always prove that the poet has the fire of the 
footlights in his veins, they are nevertheless of 
great imaginative beauty and of a finely woven 
poetic texture, and the dramatisation not alone 
of a moving tale but of moods that seem just 
beyond the rim of the soul. We can imagine 
Claude Debussy or LoefSer suffusing these plays 
with mysterious music. On Baile's Strand, and 
its mad father duelling with the waters, evokes 
an elemental thrill; the dire reality when the 
Blind Man cries to the Fool: "Somebody is 
trembling. Fool! The bench is shaking"; but 
it is Cuchulain shivering as he learns that he 
has slain his son. Such touches as these con- 
vince you that Yeats has a dramatic pulse. It 
is Deirdre that drives home this contention. 
To us it seems the best grounded, best realised of 
his work for the theatre. It has the element of 
awe and the elements of surprise, fear, great 
240 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

passion, and noble humanity. And after Tris- 
tan and Isolde, that perfect dramatic poem, is 
not the tale of Deirdre the most sweet and piti- 
ful? Conchubar is a sinister ICing Mark, Naisi 
a second Tristan, and Deirdre an undaunted 
Isolde. What if Wagner had known this touch- 
ing legend! There is emotional stuff in it for 
a music drama. Yeats has handled his material 
simply and directly — the tale goes on swift, 
relentless feet to its sorrowful end. There is 
enough poetry in it to furnish forth the reputa- 
tion of a dozen minor poets. The Shadowy 
Waters is a theme for the Irishman ; he swims in 
an atmosphere where others would hardly respire. 
He himself is Forgael, with the luminous and 
magical harp. He has tasted that crust of bread 
of which Paracelsus spoke, and therefore has 
tasted all the stars and all the heavens. 

The Land of the Heart's Desire, with its 
supernatural overtones. The Hour Glass, The 
Countess Cathleen, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and 
The Unicorn from the Stars — "where there is 
nothing there is God" — are familiar. Whether 
Yeats is as near the soil as Synge or as happy in 
catching the gestures and accents of the peasant 
we are free to doubt. Yet in The Unicorn there 
is realism enough to satisfy those who long 
merely for veracious surfaces. This poet knows 
the "boreens," the bogs and the "caubeens," 
the "gloom" and the "doom" of his native land. 
He is compact with sympathy. If he is a 
symbolist in The Golden Helmet he can repro- 
241 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

duce with fidelity the voice of Teig the fool in 
The Hour Glass; or he is both poet and painter 
in Cathleen Ni HouHhan and its finely wrought 
chmax. He has not, let us add, attempted to 
domesticate the banshee in the back yard of 
Irish poetry. Through his "magic casement" 
we may always see the haze of illusion. 

Yeats reminds us a little of that old Irish- 
woman he quotes in one of the western villages 
who believed hell an invention of the priests to 
keep people good, and that ghosts would not be 
permitted to go "traipsin' about the earth"; 
but she believed that " there are faeries and little 
leprechauns and water horses and fallen angels." 
He has so saturated himself with the folklore of 
Ireland, with the gossip of its gods and fighting 
men and its pagan mythology, that we are caught 
within the loop of his sorceries in a dream as he 
conjures up the mighty deeds and ancient super- 
stitions in The Celtic Twihght and the stories of 
Red Hanrahan. This is an attractive volume 
(V) and should be first read by those readers to 
whom all this wealth of legend may prove new. 
The plays will then be better understood. 

Ideas of Good and Evil (volume VI), essays on 
sundry subjects, like volume VIII, Discoveries, 
reveal the poet as a prose writer of assured 
ease and a master of modern ideas. He knows 
Nietzsche, Flaubert, Ibsen, and he knows Will- 
iam Blake. We need not agree with his va- 
rious dicta on dramatic art, on the technique 
of verse, or on that chimera the speaking of 
242 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

verse to the accompaniment of monotone music; 
nor need we countenance his statement that 
music is the most impersonal of the arts; the 
reverse is the truth. Mr. Yeats, like so many 
poets, seems to be tone-deaf. Music tells him no 
secrets; words are his music; at the best, music 
and words combined is an unholy marriage. 
But why should he envy the musician? His 
own verse goes to a tune of its own, a loosely 
built, melancholy, delicious tune, as Celtic as is 
the evanescent music of Chopin PoHsh. We do 
not hear the swish of the battle-axe in his verse; 
the heroic is seen as in a bewitched mirror, the 
cries of the dying are muffled by the harmonies 
of a soul that sits and wonders and faces the 
past, never the present. 

In Volume VII are those two prose master- 
pieces — for such they are — of the esoteric: 
Rosa Alchemica and The Tables of the Law. 
For the mystically inclined, Michael Robartes 
and Owen Aherne will be very real; the atmos- 
pheric quality betrays the artist. As for the 
various essays in propaganda, which appeared in 
Beltaine, Samhain, the Arrow, and elsewhere, 
they arouse the impression of an alert, sensitive, 
critical mind, fighting for the acceptance of ideas 
of national importance. Mr. Yeats the critic 
is different from Yeats the poet. He is a virile 
opponent, and as sincere as he is versatile in 
argument. He must have been a prime figure 
in the general war waged on the indifference 
and animosity of his countrymen. Will the new 

243 



THE CELTIC AWAKENING 

Irish theatre endure? Anything may be success- 
ful in Ireland; success is a shy bird that rarely 
perches on her worn and tear-stained standards, 
but in the conflict William Butler Yeats found 
his soul, and that is the main business of a man's 
life, and all the life of a poet. 



244 



IX 

THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 



When Theophile Gautier, young, strong, and 
bubbling over with genius, asked the great Bal- 
zac whether artists should marry, he was sternly 
advised to avoid women altogether. 

"But, how about correspondence?" hazarded 
the timid youth. 

Balzac reflected: "Perhaps; that forms one's 
style." 

Naturally, Gautier did not take the advice 
seriously. He knew, as the world knew later, 
that the preacher did not practise. The private 
life of the master of French fiction is, thanks to 
Lovenjoul, no longer the sentimental legend his 
sentimental biographers made of it. A Grand 
CeHbate, notwithstanding his brief, unlucky mar- 
riage, Balzac had the bachelor-temperament, 
and he had, too, many feminine-irons in the fire. 
He was as reckless as Liszt, and much more im- 
prudent than his breeched, feminine contem- 
porary, George Sand. 

But was his advice to Gautier impearled wis- 
dom? Should the artist marry? And if he does 
marry, what kind of woman should he take to 

245 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

wife? Why does the artist at least in the pop- 
ular belief, make such a mess of matrimony? 
Are unions contracted between artist-men and 
women unhappy ones? Isn't there, after all, 
an immense exaggeration in the assumption that 
they are? Let us reconnoitre this battle-field, 
over which are strewn so many gaunt, bleach- 
ing bones, so many wrecked lives — according to 
fact and fiction — and ask: What in the name 
of all that is holy and hellish is the " artistic tem- 
perament" ? 

One question at a time. Is the artist always 
unhappy in his marriage? 

You may survey the field from Socrates to 
Robert and Clara Schumann and find that the 
scales balance about evenly. Socrates had his 
Xantippe — the shrew is an historical event long 
before the spouse of Athens's wise man (a shrew 
is usually a woman who objects to being ill- 
treated, just as a cynic is a man who sees the 
truth and says it more clearly than his fellow- 
men). Doubtless, Socrates, friend of Plato, 
often envied the ceUbacy of his pupil. Philos- 
ophers should never marry. Thus Schopen- 
hauer: "When wives come in at the door, wis- 
dom escapes by the window." It sounds pretty, 
this proverb, but again history disproves it. The 
Grand Celibates do indeed form a mighty 
phalanx. In later days the list embraces the 
names of Balzac — his marriage was the one 
mistake of a bachelor-existence; Lamb, Pascal, 
De Musset, Keats, Stendhal, Merimee, Flau- 
246 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

bert, Beethoven, Swinburne, Pater, Turgenief, 
Nietzsche, not to drag in Michaelangelo, Ra- 
phael, Franz Liszt, or Walt Whitman. Bache- 
lorhood makes strange bedfellows! 

We are by no means certain that these famous 
men were happy because of their unmarried 
state ; some we know were excessively unhappy ; 
most of them were embroiled with women, and 
several went mad. Any sleek statistician will 
assure you that married life is conducive to 
longevity. And often the mother of children, 
forgetting for the moment her strenuous days, 
speaks slightingly of the monastic vocation. Nor 
is the time passed from the memory of the liv- 
ing, when a bachelor who refused to give up his 
liberty was socially looked at askance. He bore 
a doubtful reputation: A merry blade given to 
midnight wassail! Since emancipated spinster- 
hood has discovered that it is not necessary to 
marry to be happy, or to escape the stigma of 
old-maidishness, the bachelor appears in another 
light. Perhaps, who knows, he was not wrong? 

To sound the roll-call of the happy and un- 
happy artist-folk, whose works in colour and clay, 
tone, and words, have aroused the world to 
keener visions of beauty, is not my intention; 
but a few names may be reeled off. Do you 
remember Alphonse Daudet's charming yet 
depressing book of tales about the wives of 
geniuses: Daudet enjoyed a singularly happy ex- 
istence, being wedded to a woman, an artist her- 
self, who aided him in a hundred ways. It was 
247 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

his whimsical revenge, in a too successful career, 
to write such misleading stories. Thousands have 
read them, as millions read the newspapers. If 
one half-baked fellow with a spongy, viscous soul, 
whose conceit has made rotten his nerves, treats 
his wife badly, or one feather-headed female, who 
has a singing voice, elopes with the coachman, 
the world shakes its head and waggishly smiles. 
Ah, this "artistic temperament"! Just as all 
the crimes of the decalogue are committed, ac- 
cording to the shallow agitator, by the wealthy 
and only the poor are virtuous, so the artist is 
regarded as a natural-born malefactor. It is a 
survival of the suspicious feeling against strolling 
players, painters, fiddlers, and such vagabonds 
of yore. 

Yet what an array of evidence may be adduced 
in favour of the opposite view. When two poets 
like Robert and Clara Schumann, or two scien- 
tists like the Curies, have lived happily, doesn't 
this fact, even if exceptional, prove the rule? 
If the fixed stars of the artist-firmament revolve 
harmoniously one around the other, what of the 
lesser planets? Unluckily there are more comets 
and shooting-stars among the mediocre artists. 
The Carlyles were not happy — not every day. 
Better, however, their caustic differences than 
the glitter of a foolish paradise. 

Life is not all beer and skittles even for the 

favoured artist-soul, nor is Art a voluptuous 

hothouse. Byron raised a hell wherever he 

passed. He had a wife who was, to put it mild- 

248 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

ly, hardly suited to him. After only one suicide 
in the family, Shelley settled down, if that 
ethereal spirit ever could settle on anything 
earthly, with the original suffragist, Mary WoU- 
stonecraft Godwin. Hazlitt philandered with 
women and was not content in double harness. 
Nor was much-married John Milton, nor Dante, 
nor Shakespeare, says legend. Coleridge took 
opium, became a flabby genius, and daily forgot 
his duties. De Quincey followed suit at a long 
distance, though gossip avers that he was a mild 
and loving husband. William Blake, the poet 
and illustrator, was ecstatically happy during his 
married life. Whether his wife was, when he 
proposed to add another lady to the household, 
we much doubt. Wordsworth cultivated the 
domestic virtues. Bulwer did not. Thackeray 
was a model husband and suffered stoically the 
misfortune of his wife's madness. Dickens didn't 
draw happiness in his lottery. Disraeli did, also 
Tennyson. Thomas Hardy is happily mated. 
George Moore is a bachelor — and writes like 
one. Jane Austen would not have been the 
"divine Jane " if she had married. George Eliot, 
of whom it was said that she was a "George 
Sand plus science and minus sex," shocked the 
British public, yet remained ever eminently 
British herself, conventional to the last. Rus- 
kin tried matrimony and handed his wife over 
to Millais, the artist. It was a good transaction 
for all three. Emerson was married. Haw- 
thorne and Longfellow were married. Poe 
adored Virginia, his child-wife. 
249 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

Across seas the plot thickens. There are as 
many happy households in France as anywhere. 
But it is hard to convince English-speaking peo- 
ple of this very potent fact. The Parisian bo- 
hemians have set a pace that makes Puritans 
giddy. George Sand, a contemporary of George 
EHot, is a mystery. She left a brutal husband, 
met a mob of lovers in her journey through life, 
and ended in a glow of respectable old age. She 
had not one, but a dozen happy and unhappy 
love-lives. And she loved to tell the world all 
about her lovers in her books. Admirable and 
truthful artist! Rabelais was a Grand Celi- 
bate. Montaigne was a happy husband. Cha- 
teaubriand posed all his life as the misunder- 
stood genius. He had his consolations and 
Madame Recamier. There is Madame de Stael, 
a feminine genius, but she bored Napoleon and 
got on Goethe's nerves. Goethe! He married, 
though not before he had burned tapers of adora- 
tion before a half -hundred feminine shrines. He 
is the perfect type of the inconstant lover who in 
middle Hfe marries some one to look after his 
material comfort: a Don Juan on the retired Hst. 
Fate played him a trick, for he was forced to 
nurse himself. Lamartine had his Elvira, and 
Europe wept over the Elegies. Victor Hugo 
boasted his Juliette, and no one sympathised 
with him except his dearest enemy, Sainte- 
Beuve, who promptly consoled Madame Hugo. 
Alfred de Musset's career was notorious. Ab- 
sinthe and not George Sand sent him to the grave. 

Alfred de Vigny, a greater poet, though not so 
250 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

well known, cursed women in his verse because of 
Marie Dorval, his faithless love. His marriage 
to an Englishwoman, Lydia Bunbury, was a 
failure. And the elder Dumas carried off La 
Dorval. Baudelaire never married. Would that 
he had. Verlaine married and his wife divorced 
him. Dumas was a veritable pasha. His son 
was a model. Merimee, for a week George Sand's 
lover, later broke a woman's heart, and the ac- 
count thereof is good reading for both cynics and 
sentimentalists. Flaubert loved his mother too 
much to marry, but for years was entangled by 
the wily Louise Colet. The Goncourt brothers 
were born old bachelors, and if, as Bernard Shaw 
asserts, the romantic temperament is the old- 
maid's temperament, then these two were spin- 
sters. They abused women on every page of 
their diary, but spent their days in agonised and 
acid-etching of her traits for their novels. Zola 
was a bourgeois husband. Maupassant com- 
mitted suicide, spiritually and physically — 
work, women, and drugs. Gautier, impeccable 
artist, laboured in the unthankful galleys of 
journalism. He was adored by his wife and chil- 
dren. He was a lovable, good man. Ernest 
Renan was possibly a celibate by temperament, 
but his married life was none the less peaceful. 
Huysmans was an embittered bachelor. Ana- 
tole France is a man of the domestic sort, like 
many scholars. 

The musicians are not as a rule considered safe 
guardians of the hearth. Some, however, were 

251 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

and are happily married. Haydn had a scolding 
wife, but he was always merry. Handel had a 
habit of throwing ladies out of doors. He was 
much admired by the sex. Mozart, it is said, 
was fonder of his sister-in-law than of his wife. 
Who knows? Mendelssohn and his wife were 
turtle-doves. Chopin died a bachelor; he had 
loved George Sand in vain, but his affair with 
her did him no good. Liszt — oh, Liszt! He 
ran the gamut of love as he played scales: with 
velocity and brilliancy. He raised a family 
though he never married the Countess d'Agoult; 
she returned to her husband later on and Liszt 
was exculpated. "He behaved Hke a man of 
honour," was the verdict of the family council 
— meaning, of course, what a surprise to find 
an artist not a blackleg! Beethoven loved. He 
had his intimate tragedy. Brahms was also a 
bachelor. Is it necessary to come down to our 
days? We see a wedded Paderewski attracting 
large audiences. Marriage, therefore, is no bar 
to an artist's popularity. 

Painters and actors could furnish plenty of 
examples did we care to Knger in the histori- 
cal meadows. That Angelo and Raphael did 
not marry is no argument against matrimony. 
Andrea del Sarto, as readers of Browning know, 
had a minx for a wife. Rubens and Van Dyck 
spent sunny married hves. Rembrandt loved his 
wife, Saskia; also his later wife, Hendricka 
Stofifels. Impressionist Claude Monet is married, 
while Degas has cultivated privacy. Whistler 
252 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

was a contented married man, and so Rodin. 
Monticelli did not marry. He drank himself to 
death. Ibsen was a paragon of a family man. 
Tolstoy abused matrimonial chains, possibly for 
the same reason that prompted Daudet to write 
his stories of genius. (But were Daudet's men 
of genius real? We doubt it. They seem to pa- 
rade a lot of used-up, second-rate talents, not of 
the true genius variety.) The Russian writer's 
home Hfe is trumpeted to the four corners of the 
globe by his disciples. Is that why he wrote The 
Kreutzer Sonata? On Patti and her marital ad- 
ventures, it is not in our scheme of argument to 
dwell. Nor on IMarcella Sembrich — whose se- 
rene married Ufe is an object-lesson for young 
singers about to commit divorce. Rachel — 
thanks to Alfred de IVIusset and others, was 
usually an unhappy creature. Bernhardt and 
Duse have traversed soul-scarifying experiences; 
but each had the courage of her genius. At a 
time when there are no masculine counterparts 
in the theatre, wheresoever, of these two extraor- 
dinary women, it is not tactful for men to crow 
over their superiority in the art mimetic. WTiat 
D'Annunzio did to Eleanora Duse was the ac- 
customed act of artist-egotism: he utilised the 
experience for his books. He is a poet and a man 
of versatile genius. What Duse did was perhaps 
not so conscious, yet, nevertheless, the result was 
the same; her art reflected in richer tones her 
soul's attrition by sorrow. It is a sweet idea this : 
That one may gather emotional shells on the 

253 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

sandy beach of disillusionment and decorate with 
them one's art, later to be sold to pubHshers, 
picture-dealers, or sung and played in concert- 
rooms. Hail the mystery of these artistic trans- 
mutations ! These transfusions from the veins of 
love, of the fluid that is to prove the elixir of 
your art! 

Glance backward at the Hst. The scales tip 
evenly. Remember, too, that of artists' his- 
tories the top, only, is skimmed. Hundreds of 
cases could be dug up. Genius is hard to live 
with, even in the casual ways of Hfe. Genius 
under the same roof with genius (and of the two 
sexes) is a stirring opportunity for a psycholo- 
gist. The wonder is that the number of happily 
married great artists — not the quotidian fry — 
is so large. The divorce calendar of butchers, 
bakers, and candlestick-makers bulks in pro- 
portion quite as effectively. But the doubting 
male Thomases may, at this juncture, quote 
Goncourt: "There are no women of genius; the 
only women of genius are men!" 

And that brings us to the crux of the situation. 
What is the artistic temperament? 



II 

We have now seen that artists, like the lion 
and the lamb, can marry or mix without fear of 
sudden death, cross words, bad cookery, or loss 
of artist-power. Why then does the rule work 
for one and not the other? Go ask the stars. 

254 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

Where are the love-birds of yester-year? Why 
doesn't Mr. Worldly Wiseman get along with his 
stout spouse? Why does the iceman in the alley 
beat his wife? Or, why does a woman, who has 
never heard of Nora Helmer, leave her home, 
her husband, her children, for the love, not of a 
cheap histrion, but because she thinks she can 
achieve fame as an actress? It is the call of the 
far-away, the exotic, the unfamiliar. Its echoes 
are heard in the houses of bankers, tailors, police- 
men, and politicians, as well as in the studios of 
the great artists. 

But the news of the artist's misdemeanour gets 
into print first. The news is published early and 
often. A beautiful young actress, or a rising 
young portrait-painter, a gifted composer, tal- 
ented sculptor, brilHant violinist, rare poet, 
versatile writer — when any one of these strays 
across the barrier into debatable territory, the 
watchmen on the moral towers lustily beat their 
warning gongs. It is a matter for headhnes. 
Strong lungs bawl the naked facts to the winds. 
Depend upon it — no matter who escapes the 
pubHc hue and cry, the artist is always found 
out and his peccadilloes proclaimed from pulpits 
and housetops. 

Why, you ask, should a devotee of aesthetic 
beauty ever allow his feet to lead him astray? 
Here comes in your much-vaunted, much-dis- 
cussed "artistic temperament" — odious phrase! 
Hawked about the market-place, instead of re- 
posing in the holy of hoUes, this temperament 

255 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

has become a byword. Every cony-catcher, pu- 
gilist, or cocotte takes refuge behind his or her 
"art." It is a name accursed. When the tripe- 
sellers of literature wish to rivet upon their wares 
public attention, they call aloud: "Oh, my ar- 
tistic temperament!" If an unfortunate is ar- 
rested, she is generally put down on the police- 
blotter as an "actress." If a fellow and his wife 
tire of too much bHss, their "temperaments" 
are aired in the courts. Worse still, "affinities" 
are dragged in. Shades of Goethe! who wrote 
the first problem novel and called it Elective 
Affinities. All decent people shudder at the 
word, and your genuine artist does not boast 
of his "artistic temperament." It has become 
gutter-slang. It is a synonym for "nerves." 
A true artist can get along without it, keeping 
within the sanctuary of his soul the ideal that is 
the mainspring of his work. 

The true artist temperament, in reality, is the 
perception and appreciation of beauty whether in 
pigment, form, tone, words, or in nature. It 
may exist coevally with a strong religious sense. 
It adds new values to grey, everyday life. But 
its possessor does not parade this personal qual- 
ity as an excuse for licence. That he leaves to 
the third-rate artisan, to the charlatan, to the 
vicious, who shield their actions behind a too 
torrid temperament. 

Now, art and sex are co-related; art without 
sex is flavourless, hardly art at all, only a frozen 
copy. All the great artists have been virile. 
256 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

And their greatness consisted in the victory over 
their temperaments; in the triumph, not of mind 
over matter — futile phrase ! — but in the tri- 
umphant synthesis, the harmonious commingle- 
ment of mind and artistic material. Sensualist 
your artist may be, but if he is naught else, then 
all his technical dexterity, his virtuosity, will not 
avail — he cannot be a great artist. 

Whether artists should marry is an eternally 
discussed question. It is so largely a personal 
one that advice is surely impertinent. George 
Moore, above all other Victorian novelists, has 
described the true artist-life — do you recall his 
Mildred Lawson? Mr. Shaw, in his Love Among 
the Artists, shows us other sides. St. Bernard 
holds no brief for the artist; Shaw is more of a 
Puritan than his critics reahse. Certainly an 
artist is risking much in marrying, for the artist 
is both selfish and sensitive. He has precedents 
for and against the act, and probably he thinks 
that whether he does or does not, he will regret it. 

A rainbow mirage, this of two congenial tem- 
peraments entering wedlock! When He ex- 
claims — it is June and the moon rides in the 
tender blue — "It is just as easy for two to live 
as one on twenty-five dollars a week!" the re- 
cording angel smiles and weeps. Nor has the 
yoimg adventurer "spiders on his ceiHng," as 
they say in Russia. He dares to be a fool, and 
that is the first step in the direction of wisdom. 
But She? Oh, She is enraptured. Naturally 
they will economise — occasional descents into 

257 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

fifty-cent bohemias: sawdust, pink wine, and 
wit. But no new gowns. No balls. No thea- 
tres. No operas. No society. It is to be Art! 
Art! Art! 

So they bundle their temperaments before an 
official and are made one. She plays the piano. 
He paints. A wonderful vista, hazy with dreams, 
spreads out before them. She will teach a few 
pupils, keep up her practising, and put aside 
enough to go, some day, to Vienna, there to 
study with a pupil of Leschetizky. He will man- 
fully paint — yes, only a few portraits; but land- 
scape will be the object of his ambition. 

A year passes. What a difference! Gone are 
the dreams. There are now many spiders on the 
ceiling. To pay for the food they eat, or to own 
the roof over their heads is their ultimate desire. 
She looks paler. He may or may not drink, it 
makes little difference. There are no portraits 
painted — an artist must be a half society man 
nowadays to capture such commissions. She 
would accept pupils, but their home engrosses 
every hour of her day. Artists usually demand 
too much of a woman. She must be a social 
success, a maternal nurse, a cook, and concubine 
combined. Women are versatile. They are 
born actresses. But on ten dollars a week they 
can't run a household, watch the baby — oh, 
thrice wretched intruder ! — play Hke a second 
Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler, and look like an houri. 
To be a steam-heated American beauty, your 
father must be a millionaire. 
258 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

The artist-woman is a finely attuned fiddle. 
You may mend a fiddle, but not a bell, says Ib- 
sen. Yes, but if you smash a fiddle, the music 
is mute. And every day of discontent snaps a 
string. How long does the beauty last? Then be- 
gin mutual misunderstandings. Pity, the most 
subtly cruel of the virtues, stalks the studio. 
Secretly she pities him; secretly he pities her. 
This pity breeds hatred. At breakfast, the most 
trying time of the day — even when you haven't 
anything to eat — he pities her flushed face as 
she runs in from the kitchen with the eggs and 
coffee. In his eyes she is no longer a sylph. 
(The twenty-five dollars a week are shrunk.) 
She pities him because he is flushed from his 
night's outing. His appetite, like his temper, is 
capricious. In her eyes, he is simply the ordi- 
nary male brute, which is true enough. Then he 
is imprudent and flings Schopenhauer at her. 

Have you noticed how often well-bred, book- 
ish, and artist men quote Schopenhauer at their 
wives? The bow-legged, long-haired sex — eh! 
Aha! He rubs his hands. Women are, all said 
and done, the inferior sex! What did lago re- 
mark — but he doesn't like to quote that speech 
of the Ancient's with its chronicling of small beer 
for fear his wife may turn quietly upon him with 
the monosyllable — "Beer!" He hates to be 
twitted about his faults, so he takes up Nietz- 
sche's Beyond Good and Evil and reads: "That 
because of woman's cookery, the development of 
mankind has been longest retarded." Or," Wom- 
an— the Eternally Tedious!" Or, "Woman 

259 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

has hitherto been most despised by Woman!" 
It is not in good taste, all this. 

But she has no time to quote Ibsen and Shaw 
for his discomfiture. The milkman is keeping 
her busy by asking for the amount of his bill. 
As baby must have pure milk, she compromises 
by smiHng at her foolish young man and teases 
him for the money. He dives into empty pockets 
and looks blankly at her. Sometimes this goes 
on for years; often in reckless despair he throws 
his lamp over the moon and she her bonnet over 
the wind-mill. Female suffrage may make such 
conditions impossible in the future by forbidding 
men the ballot. 

Yet, how many happy artist households there 
are ! Sometimes the couple paint a quatre mains, 
as Manet puts it; sometimes the wife is sim- 
ply a woman and not an artist. Nor dare we 
claim that this latter species of union is always 
the happier. It may not be. She may be a 
nightmare to him, a millstone around his neck, 
through sheer stupidity or lack of sympathy. 
Men, ordinary males, like to be coddled; artist- 
men, in whom there is often a thin streak of 
feminine vanity, must be subtly flattered. The 
nerves lie near the surface in artist people. 
Idealists, they paint with their imagination 
everything in too bright hues. Labour, really, 
puts them out. It is the same young man and 
the same young woman who, under pine-blos- 
soms, swore undying love — the same, except 
that a year or several have passed. 

As is always the case, the rather despised 
260 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

Womanly-Woman — the woman of the feather- 
bed temperament, who is neither dove nor devil 
— gathers the honours. She knows that the 
artist-man, that hopeless hybrid, so admirably 
apostrophised by Shaw in the first act of Man 
or Superman, must be humoured. (Feed the 
brute!) He is the spoilt child of Fate. If he 
goes too far from his mamma's apron-strings, he 
gets into trouble, falls into the mud-puddle of 
life, and is sure to drag some silly girl with him. 
So she, being wise with the instinctive wisdom 
of her sex — the Womanly- Woman, I mean — 
I have seldom encountered a Womanly- Woman 
who was also an artist — plays him to the end of 
the rope, and then he is back at her knees. Such 
marriages are successful for the reason that the 
artist-husband doesn't have time to be unhappy. 
It is when the lean years are upon the artist, 
the years of thin thought and bleak regrets, that 
he will miss a loving wife. Then he will cry 
in the stillness of his heart: Time, eternal 
shearer of souls, spare me thy slow cUppings! 
Shear me in haste, shear me close and swiftly! 
He is the literary artist, and even in the face of 
death he wears the shop-mask. His "afhnity," 
whom he has never encountered at the epoch of 
their earthly pilgrimage, congratulates herself 
that the latter lonesome years will not be bur- 
dened by the whims and ills of an old man. She 
may possess the artist temperament and be a 
spinster. Often she escapes that fate by early 
marriage to a soHd, sensible business or profes- 
261 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

sional man, who pays the bills and admires her 
pasty painting, her facile, empty music-making, 
her unplayed plays, unread novels, and verse — 
that are privately printed. Sensible old Nature, 
as ever, thus hits the happy mean. 

It is not necessary to draw any particular in- 
ference from the foregoing, save to add that the 
"artistic temperament" is not what the news- 
papers represent it to be; that when it exists in 
association with high ideals and natural gifts, the 
result is sincere art; that it is hardly a quality 
making for happiness; that men and women, 
whether artists or mediocrities, must fight the 
inevitable duel of the sexes until death do them 
part; and finally, that the breakfast- room epi- 
sode referred to is a comedy played daily all 
over the globe, and the hero need not be a painter 
— for a rising young plumber can assume the 
role with equal success. A sense of the humor- 
ous would save half the family jars in house- 
holds, artistic and inartistic. The spectacle of 
two bipeds strutting and fuming beneath the 
glimpses of the sun, while over yonder the vast 
cosmic spaces are undergoing the birth of new 
constellations — surely the very angels in heaven 
must sit in reserved stalls, ironically spying upon 
humanity's antics. After all, an artist is a 
human being; this fact is too often forgotten by 
writers who see in the man of talent, or genius, 
a mixture of gorilla, god, or madman. 

To the young artist who has mustered his 
material the spectacle of the world is an allur- 
262 



THE ARTIST AND HIS WIFE 

ing one. He stands on the brink and the great 
stream of life flows by bearing upon its bosom 
gaily decorated barges, glittering with lights, 
flowers, with beauty. He is tempted. It is so 
easy to step on board and be carried away on 
this intoxicating current. Besides, it means suc- 
cess. He may be a lover of beautiful things. 
He may even be domestic and desire a home, a 
family. And the latter reef is often as danger- 
ous to his art as the rocks on the coast of Bo- 
hemia. But whatever he does he must make the 
choice — there is no middle way. All or noth- 
ing. The world or art. Paul Gauguin has said 
that aU artists are either revolutionists or re- 
actionists. The former state may mean glory 
without bread; the latter always means bread. 
And if our young artist can live on bread alone 
let him say to his ideals: "Get thee behind 
me." But if he is true to his temperament then 
will his motto be — plain living and high paint- 
ing. AU the rest is vanity and varnish. 



263 



X 

BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

GAUTIER THE JOURNALIST 

There was a popping of critical guns in Paris 
for the celebration of the centenary of Theo- 
phile Gautier, August 31, 191 1, and while there 
was much florid writing about Gautier the poet 
and Gautier the romancer, little was said about 
his career as a journaHst. Perforce a final es- 
timate of the man is made from his work be- 
tween covers, because the greater part of his 
vast production is hidden away in the numerous 
musty files of newspapers and magazines the 
very names of which are forgotten. According 
to his son-in-law, Emile Bergerat, the writings of 
the "good Theo" would if collected fill more 
than three hundred volumes. Not a bad show- 
ing for one whose legend was that of Olympian 
laziness and a voluptuous impassibility in the 
presence of the dear, common joys of mankind! 
But it is all a legend as legendary as the indif- 
ference and inactivity of Goethe, an untruth 
uttered by Heine, when every hour of a long 
life was crowded with his activities as states- 
man, man of science, poet, dramatist, novelist, 
and administrator of public affairs at Weimar. 
264 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

Gautier played the role of an easy-going boule- 
vardier; in private he bitterly complained of his 
slavery to the Grub street of his beloved Paris. 
Nevertheless this same journalism was his sal- 
vation, otherwise he might have found himself 
in the wretched condition of his friends Charles 
Baudelaire, Petrus Borel, Gerard de Nerval, and 
Villiers de I'lsle-Adam. What distinguished him 
from these bohemians of genius was his capacity 
for work. He possessed a giant's physique and 
his nerves were seemingly of steel. He once 
wrote: 

"There is this much good in journalism, that 
it mixes you up with the crowd, humanises you 
by perpetually giving you your own measure, 
and preserves you from the infatuations of soli- 
tary pride." 

Baudelaire and Villiers and the rest of the 
bohemian crew might have profited by this. 

And what a crew of bohemians were his friends 
in 1 83 1, those poor chaps of great promise and 
little production! Their "Tartar's camp" was 
pitched in an open space in the Rue Roche- 
chouart until driven away by the police. Their 
motto was " Clothing is prohibited." Louis Ber- 
trand, "Gaspard de la Nuit," as he was better 
known, died in want and his body was thrown 
into potter's field. Petrus Borel, at one time 
acclaimed as the true head of the Romantic 
revolution and superior to Victor Hugo, died in 
exile, his talents run to seed. How many others 
did the young Gascon Gautier see come to 
265 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

naught? He was philistine enough to read the 
handwriting on the wall; besides, he had the 
illustrious example of his chief, Victor Hugo, 
who proved himself canny in dealing with money- 
matters, a sort of Jovian bourgeois, in whose 
romanticism there lurked a practical flavour. 
He never wore a scarlet waistcoat; perhaps 
he didn't care for the colour, though he allowed 
his disciples any manner of extravagance so long 
as it furthered his own ambition. 

Those pseudo-Parisian pagan poets who set 
such store on Gautier's revolt against the canons 
of art, society, and rehgion might profitably 
pattern after their master in his sane and solid 
performances in verse and prose. His full name 
was Pierre Jules Theophile Gautier, and though 
he was bom in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrenees, August 
31, 181 1) he was of Provengal origin. But there 
was little of the conventional southern expansive- 
ness or vivacity in his makeup ; a rather moody, 
melancholic man despite his robust humours, 
robust appetites. He wore a mask; that mask 
was romanticism. Nevertheless he never suc- 
cumbed to the vapours and mouthings of those 
sons of Belial. He always kept his head, even 
when he experimented with haschisch in com- 
pany with Baudelaire at the famous Hotel 
Pimadon, The truth about him is that he was a 
hard-working journalist, a good husband and 
loving father; solicitous of the welfare of his 
family and unrelaxing in his labours. Over his 
desk hung this grim reminder: "A daily news- 
266 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

paper appears daily." He never forgot it, and 
from his atelier at Neuilly he sent his daily stint 
of columns, poorly remunerated as he was for 
them. He never went into debt like his friend 
Balzac. If you haven't read his books you may 
well imagine him an unromantic and honest 
business man instead of a composer of most 
fantastic, delightful dreams and romances. 

When Gautier first came up to Paris it was 
with the intention of becoming a painter. He 
had the painter's eye, the quick, retentive vision, 
the colour sense; above all the sense of com- 
position. He entered the studio of Rioult for a 
period and then he read Sainte-Beuve, Hugo, 
and the Young France school, and he knew that 
his vocation was not paint but letters. How- 
ever, he is always the painter in his prose and 
verse, full of imagery, yet concrete, supple, vivid 
of hue, brilliant, and harmonious. His oft- 
quoted saying that he was "a man for whom the 
visible world existed" is true enough, though in 
a much more limited sense than his admirers 
may realise. He was one of the greatest de- 
scriptive writers in the French language, ranking 
immediately after Chateaubriand and Flaubert 
without the dazzling verbal magic of the former 
or the subtle harmonious modulations of the 
latter. The form of Gautier is fixed; he treats 
all themes with unfailing and unvarying brill- 
iancy. His style is never so sensitively modu- 
lated as Flaubert's in accordance with the idea. 
Flaubert is ever in modulation; Gautier is, as 
267 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

Huysmans declared, "a gigantic impersonal re- 
flector." We may demur to the charge of im- 
personality, but there is no denying the occa- 
sional monotonous effect of his overcoloured 
orchestration. He was a "visualist," not an 
"auditive," as the psychologists have it; the 
image with him proceeded from things seen, 
hence he has been accused of lack of imagina- 
tion and of a dearth of "general ideas." To be 
sure he did not meddle with politics; his atti- 
tude toward socialism was of unaffected scorn, 
and he could not despite his genius create a live 
man or a woman, as did Flaubert and Thackeray. 
He was not as profound as Baudelaire, though 
less morbid. But he never tried to prove any- 
thing; he was a literary artist, not an agitator. 
That "professor of literature" Emile Faguet, 
who has so beautifully misunderstood Stendhal 
and Flaubert, after saying of Gautier that he 
knew all the resources of the French language 
and style and that he produces incredible effects, 
nevertheless believes that he is doomed to ex- 
tinction; and these two statements, as Mr. 
Saintsbury points out, are contradictory. Mr. 
Saintsbury's "ancient lawyer," father of a 
family, who found Mademoiselle de Maupin a 
"most beautiful book," would nowadays dis- 
cover others to assent to his judgment. Made- 
moiselle de Maupin, written in 1835, is as 
unmoral as Mother Goose; and in the once no- 
torious preface, as significant for Gautier's gen- 
eration as was the preface to Hugo's Cromwell, 
268 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

we suspect the poet of impudent mockery, of 
putting his tongue in his cheek, as he did earlier 
in Les Jeunes-France. He had a sense of humour 
if Hugo had not. 

But there was another Gautier. The pan- 
theist who could boast that "I am a man for 
whom the visible world exists" could also con- 
fess that reaHty evoked in him fantastic dreams, 
that men and women were as a world of pale 
shadows. His nerves were not always in tune. 
He is his own D 'Albert, suffering from the nos- 
talgia of the ideal. Strange too that this lover 
of the concrete should occupy himself for so many 
years with ideas of death, decay, the horrors of 
the tomb and of mummies and vampires re- 
vivified. In his sonorous, rhythmic daylight 
prose he attempted again and again to pin down 
the impalpable in a phrase. How many of his 
tales deal with the spirit, and fail. The Dead 
Leman (1836), a wonderful piece of art, is frankly 
materialistic; but what fancy, what verve! 
There is bold fantasy a-plenty, yet the externals 
of the soul are only scratched. Gautier strove 
to sound spiritual overtones and failed. His 
most successful rehabilitation of a past epoch 
is Le Capitaine Fracasse (1863), as successful 
in preserving tonal unity as Thackeray's Es- 
mond. And Une Nuit de Cleopatre (1845), so 
sympathetically translated into English by Laf- 
cadio Hearn, rivals Salammbo in its exotic 
colouring and archaeological splendour. The 
travel books, Spain, Constantinople, Russia, 
269 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

Algeria, Italy, and others, are models of their 
genre. Their author headed the vanguard of 
the new men, though he didn't wear his heart in a 
sling or his sensibilities on his sleeve, as do those 
artistic descendants of Chateaubriand, Pierre 
Loti and Maurice Barres. Gautier's Spain is 
as fresh as it was the day it was written. As a 
poet he is best known by his polished Emaux 
et Camees (1852), in which the artistry out- 
shines the poetic significance. His first verse 
appeared in print in 1830. Within a narrow 
range he is a poet, but it is for the most part 
verse for the eye, not the ear. This is as might 
be expected from one who decries the expression 
of the sensibilities as shown in De Musset or 
Coppee and who believes so firmly in the su- 
premacy of art, in its immortahty. He saw the 
secret correspondences of things remotely re- 
lated. He was pantheistic to the marrow. 
Henry James once wrote of him: ''But if there 
are sermons in stones, there are profitable re- 
flections to be made even on Theophile Gautier, 
notably this one, that a man's supreme use in the 
world is to master his intellectual instrument and 
play it in perfection." This is happily put, and 
in that qualifying "even" all the secret of the 
critical art of Henry James may be lodged. 

Gautier denied that he wore a scarlet waist- 
coat at the world-stirring Hernani first perform- 
ance in 1830; it was a pink doublet, a distinction 
without much of a difference. Anyhow it was 
a symbol of his adherence to revolutionary ro- 
270 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

manticism, though his revolt was less a question 
of literary manipulation than of a state of soul, a 
manner of feeling. Rousseau and Byron and 
Chateaubriand, together with the moonshine 
romancers of Germany, Tieck and the rest, set 
rolling the movement of 1830. How far Gautier 
had outgrown it may be noted in the statement 
of Emile Bergerat that his father-in-law toward 
the close of his life had grown fond of Stendhal 
and was particularly devoted to La Chartreuse 
de Parme. There's a curious Hterary adven- 
ture for you, Theophile the gorgeous, reading 
Stendhal, the siccant psychologist. Gautier 
first wrote for the Cabinet de Lecture and Ariel; 
then for France Litteraire. During the scandal 
caused by Mademoiselle de Maupin Balzac sent 
Jules Sandeau for him and engaged him to write 
for the Chronique de Paris, at a desolation-breed- 
ing salary. He also "ghosted " for Balzac, whom 
he had nicknamed "Homere" de Balzac. He 
collaborated for the evening journal founded by 
Nestor Roqueplan in 1830 entitled La Charte; 
this was about 1836. With Alphonse Karr he 
joined the staff of Figaro, writing feuilletons, also 
romances that later were published in book form, 
Fortunio, for example. In 1837 with Gerard de 
Nerval he went to the Presse of Girardin, where 
he wrote art, literary, and dramatic criticism. 
His criticism has been criticised as being too 
amiable, an unusual crime in those cutthroat, 
swashbuckling days of the Parisian press. In 
reality he was too soft-hearted for the ancient 
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and honourable art of cricitism. But reread, van- 
ished worlds of art reappear. From 1845 to his 
death, at Neuilly, October 22, 1872, curiously 
enough the sixty-first birthday of Franz Liszt, 
who Uke Gautier was born in 181 1, he wrote for 
the Moniteur and the Journal Officiel. In 1867 
he wrote for the Minister of PubHc Instruction 
the report of the poetic movement in France, and 
in 1900 his other son-in-law, the poet Catulle 
Mendes, the whilom husband of the gifted Judith 
Gautier, continued for M. Georges Leygues, 
Minister of Pubhc Instruction, the report from 
1867 till 1900. Gautier was associated in the 
Parnassian movement with Catulle Mendes and 
Louis Xavier de Ricard, a leading figure of which 
was the icy pessimist Leconte de Lisle. Theo- 
phile was in his love of formal perfection a Greek 
at heart. 

His life long he was driven by the lacerating 
spur of poverty. The revolution of 1848 robbed 
him of his savings and the war of 1870 quite 
ruined him. The Tableaux de Siege (1871) re- 
veals an unquiet Gautier, his heart bleeding for 
his native land ruined by the conqueror, his 
beautiful city blackened, a waste from the torches 
of the Commune. Sensibihty is abundant in this 
book. He died broken in spirit, he, the once gay 
journalist who had boasted that he never revised 
his manuscripts, for he always tossed his periods 
like cats in the air and they always fell on their 
feet. Theophile Gautier laboured long and wrote 
beautifully. There are epitaphs of less distinction. 
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MAETERLINCK'S MACBETH 

The way of the translator is hard. Maurice 
MaeterHnck tells us this with inimitably gra- 
cious style in his version of Macbeth. His 
introduction to the play is simple and per- 
spicacious. A loving student for many years 
of the English poet, he is acquainted with the 
vast commentary that has parasitically encum- 
bered that giant oak ; his notes reveal the depth 
and breadth of his reading. A hterary critic 
asked the other day: Why translate Shakespeare? 
The answer is obvious: Because it is Shake- 
speare. No English writer, with the possible ex- 
ception of Chaucer, is so difficult to transpose to 
another language; yet Shakespeare has been 
turned into nearly every language and still re- 
mains Shakespeare. Shelley and Keats, Mar- 
lowe and Milton evaporate in translation; but 
Shakespeare even when shorn of his music re- 
mains the essential Shakespeare. He is more 
lyrical in ItaUan, sturdier in German, more 
rhetorical in French; yet his essence remains. 
This cannot be said of Goethe in French or of 
Ibsen in English. If, as has been contended by 
modern iconoclastic critics, the philosophy of 
Shakespeare is borrowed from Montaigne, his 
humour from Rabelais, and his history from 
Plutarch, Holinshed, and the Itahan romancers, 
and if his poetry is not translatable, what then is 
the secret of his power when garbed in foreign 

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language? Maeterlinck does not pose this 
question, though he is conscious of its com- 
plexity. 

His introduction poses as a preliminary the 
question of the trilogy, Hamlet, Lear, and Mac- 
beth. The last is in the world of tragedy a 
solitary peak which ^schylus alone could have 
attained. Many critics will disagree with this 
contention, for Lear has been held to be the 
Himalayan summit. However, we can but fall 
in line with the Belgian poet at present, for he is 
chiefly concerned with Macbeth. He finds the 
play a sort of biography more or less legendary; it 
floats on the confines of history and legend. The 
form is confused, the chief characters not sym- 
pathetic. Macbeth is not a piece hien faite; it 
is too long. Of the more than two thousand 
verses about one-fifth must be suppressed for 
representation. This history of two crowned 
assassins is repugnant, for their intelligence is 
mediocre, their morals on the other side of good 
and evil, their show of repentance null; in a word, 
there is little in the machinery of the drama to 
win our approbation. All the qualities that do 
not go to making a masterpiece are absent. 
Nevertheless, a masterpiece Macbeth is, and one 
that quite o'ercrows Corneille, Racine, Goethe — 
we are now quoting Maeterlinck, who sets him- 
self the task of again solving the enigma. For 
the scholarly Frenchman from Voltaire to Fa- 
guet a play must be literature as well as moving 
drama. It must develop logically according to 
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canon. If not Greek then Gallic. Maeter- 
linck, with his Flemish temperament, you are 
tempted to add his Gothic fond, has no such 
scholastic scruples. His own theatre shows him 
a poet who first supped on the enchantments, 
mysteries, and horrors of the Elizabethan and 
later writers. He knows Marlowe as well as 
Webster, John Ford as well as Beaumont and 
Fletcher. Thus it may be seen that Macbeth, 
with its profound painting of sinister souls, dmes 
damnees, would stir him to his marrow. 

He points out the impersonality of the poet, 
the conversational diapason, a realistic speech so 
often to be found ; above all his favourite thesis 
that a dramatist of the first order can suggest 
the "interior dialogue" (see Maeterlinck's re- 
marks on Ibsen's Masterbuilder) is in the case 
of Shakespeare triumphantly vindicated. The 
very pauses in Macbeth are pregnant with 
horror. The detestable crime is but the frame- 
work around which hovers the echo of the super- 
natural. Voices of the human conscience, sound- 
less overtones of guilty souls, flood the air. Nor 
does Maeterlinck revel in transcendental ec- 
stasies. If he is the poet in dealing with Shake- 
speare, he is also the cool-headed man of the the- 
atre. He realises the miracle of Macbeth, but, 
like Goethe, he knows that every great work of 
art is immensurable, even to its creator. 

And the translation! There's the rub. If, 
says Maeterlinck, a landscape is a state of soul 
(Stendhal's etat d'dme), so is a translation. He 

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rehearses the various attempts to make Shake- 
speare domesticated in the French tongue from 
Pierre Letourneur, Francois Victor Hugo — not 
to be confounded with his father — Benjamin 
Laroche, Maurice Pottecher, Alexandre Beljame 
to his own. (He does not mention the Hamlet 
of Marcel Schwob and Morand.) Fidelity to 
the rhythmic movement, verbal music, poetic 
spirit, local colour, idiomatic or interpretative — 
how many rocks there are in the road of the con- 
scientious translator, tormented alike by the 
majesty and humanity of Shakespeare's speech! 
MaeterHnck gives as an example the lines (Act 
HI, last scene): 

"Strange things I have in head that will to hand 
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned." 

Hugo thus renders the speech: "J'ai dans la 
tete d'etranges choses qui reclament ma main et 
veulent etre executees avant d'etre meditees" — 
which is clumsy and unrhythmic. Beljame's 
version is better, so is Pottecher's. Guizot, 
Montegut, Laroche, and Georges Duval are 
adduced. We like best of all Maeterlinck's, as 
follows: "J'ai dans la tete d'etranges choses qui 
aboutiront a ma main; et qu'il faut accomplir 
avant qu'on les ait meditees." We are here far 
from the famous French version of "Frailty, thy 
name is woman," which appeared as "Mile, 
Frailty is the name of a lady." 

But Maurice Maeterlinck, with his funds 
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of poetic sympathy and subtle intuitions, his 
tact, knowledge, and verbal versatility, can suc- 
cessfully bridge the gulf that lies between the 
genius of the EngUsh language and the genius of 
the French language. We select several of the 
famous single lines as specimens and admire the 
agile resources of the translator. For example: 
''Quand nous retrouverons-nous? " is the equiv- 
alent for "When shall we three meet again?" 
"Fair is foul and foul is fair" becomes "Le laid 
est beau et le beau laid." These are not very 
difficult tests. 

The onomatopoeia is of necessity missed in the 
speech: "A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come." 
In French: "Le tambour! Le tambour! Mac- 
beth arrive ici!" Nor is "eteins-toi, eteins-toi, 
court flambeau!" quite akin to "Out, out, brief 
candle ! " " Frappe done, Macduff, et damne soit 
celui qui crier a le premier: 'Arrete! c'est assez!' " 
retains some of the primal rhythmic vigour and 
assonance of "Lay on, Macduflf; and damned be 
he that first cries 'Hold, enough!'" "Hang 
out your banners on the outward walls" is ren- 
dered: "Deployez vos bannieres sur les rem- 
parts exterieurs," a faithful transcription. 

Some of the tirades are admirably para- 
phrased, strange though they sound to English 
ears. The ferocity of Lady Macbeth's speech, 
Act I, scene 5, misses neither in meaning nor 
in terrible intonations; and Maeterlinck has 
fairly succeeded, we are fain to believe, with such 
a snarl as: 

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"Hie thee hither, 
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear 
And chastise with the valour of my tongue 
All that impedes thee from the golden round 
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crowned withal." — Act I, scene 5. 

With Maeterlinck this goes to the tune of 
" Viens ici que je puisse verser mon courage dans 
ton oreille et chatier par la vaillance de mes 
paroles tous les obstacles au cercle d'or dont le 
destin et un appui surnaturel semblent te cou- 
ronner," which is bald prose. (Is it not odd that 
Richard Strauss should have selected this as a 
motto for his tone poem Macbeth?) The gross 
humour of the Porter in the knocking at the gate 
scene is not attenuated, though we must protest 
against such a supersubtlety as "le trop boire est 
lejesuite de la paillardise" (the italic is ours) for 
"much drink may be said to be an equivocator 
of lechery," 

We need not quote further to prove that if 
Maeterlinck does not overcome insuperable 
difficulties he has accomplished much more than 
the majority of his predecessors. It is a brill- 
iant performance, this translation, superior to 
work for which many a man has attained a seat 
in the French Academy. This version sustained 
the trial of a public performance at the Abbey of 
Saint Wandrille with Mme. Georgette Leblanc- 
Maeterlinck as Lady Macbeth. 



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PATER REREAD 

Rereading a favourite author is very much 
like meeting after years of absence a once-beloved 
friend. A nervous dread that your expectations 
may not be realised overtakes you as you match 
your old and new sensations. Not every great 
writer can be reread. The time-spirit sometimes 
intervenes; and one's own moods are not to be 
lightly passed over. Especially is this the case 
with a marked personality such as that of Walter 
Pater, a new library edition of whose works, in ten 
stately volumes, is just completed. Will he sur- 
vive a second, a third, a tenth reading? you ask 
as you open somewhat anxiously these pages with 
their wide margins. Will the old magic operate? 
And then the disturber appears, some belated 
antiquarian moralist who exclaims: *'Ha! A 
hedonist! " A disquieting assertion. No wonder 
Pater rather pathetically complained to Mr. 
Gosse: "I wish they wouldn't call me a hedonist; 
it produces such a bad effect on the minds of 
people who don't know Greek." No doubt call- 
ing Pater an immoralist has had its bad effect on 
people who don't know anything about litera- 
ture. "In the House of Morality there are many 
mansions," declared Henley. Pater Hves in one 
of them, despite the mock puritanical attitude 
of a few critics who still adhere to the naughty- 
boy theory and practice of criticism, with its 
doling out of bad marks. The didactic spirit 
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ever fails to interpret. Consider the uneasy 
moral itch from which Ruskin and Brunetiere 
suffered. 

Our personal experience on rereading Pater 
was pleasant. The bogy man of hedonism did 
not frighten us off; nor did the palpable fact that 
Pater is never altogether for Apollo or alto- 
gether for Christ. Indeed, in the Aristippean 
flux and reflux of his ideas we discerned a strong 
family likeness to the theories of William James 
and Henri Bergson; a pragmatism poetically 
transfigured. That once famous suppressed Con- 
clusion to the Renaissance is quite abreast with 
modern notions of the plastic universe. You are 
reminded too of Renan — Renan, who, no more 
than Pater, suffered from the "mania of certi- 
tude." But the silken insincerities of the French- 
man are not to be surprised in Pater's golden sen- 
tences. He indulged at times in certain affecta- 
tions, dandyisms of style, or mood; in essentials, 
however, he is always earnest. His scholarship 
may not have been of the profoundest, his criti- 
cisms of art not those of an expert; nevertheless 
he wrote open-mindedly and to the best of his 
ability — and what a wonderful "best" it was! 
— and always with humanity in his mind's eye. 
He distilled from art and literature a "quickened 
sense of life," and in his books is the quintes- 
sence, the very ecstasy of experience. He 
"loaded every rift of his subject with ore," and 
despite his reputation for priggish erudition, a 
delicate humour, not untipped with irony, lines 
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the back of many a paragraph. To read him 
often would be like a surfeit of Chopin or cara- 
mels. The figure of Pater the humanist, rather 
than Pater the verbal virtuoso, is getting more 
distinct with the years. 

His morals are not exposed with a brassy or- 
chestration. He never tries to prove anything, 
a relief in these days of cruel didacticism. He 
is both ardent and sceptical, and could have said 
with Maurice Barres that "felicity must be in 
the experimenting, and not in the results it 
promises." No critic has ever settled anything. 
Pater played the role of spectator in the game of 
life, disillusioned perhaps, and not much caring 
for the prizes run for in the sweat and dust of the 
arena. Neither was he an umpire, but suffered 
the shghtly melancholy happiness of the disinter- 
ested looker-on. It is a part which tempera- 
ment decides. Luckily for the world, there are 
not many of such temperaments. In his early 
essay Diaphaneite he has described such a na- 
ture, which "does not take the eye by breadth of 
colour; rather is it that fine edge of light, where 
the elements of our moral nature refine them- 
selves to the burning point." Whether in his 
Ufe he succeeded in maintaining that dangerous 
mood of ecstasy, a mood that we only associate 
with mystics and poets; whether he burned al- 
ways with this "hard gem-like flame" we do not 
know, nor need it concern us; but we do know 
that he succeeded in infusing a moiety of the 
ecstasy into his writings. And that is his suc- 
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cess in art as in life. Doubtless he reached his 
goal as other great artists have done through a 
series of disgusts. That is one way to perfec- 
tion, and if for some his art is as cold as a star, 
for others every page is sympathetic; at times he 
gives you the impression of a hearty human 
hand-clasp. 

The truth is that his followers or would-be 
disciples have clouded popular comprehension; 
Pater formed no school. Himself the product 
of many complex currents of thought and emo- 
tion, a man who filed his form to a tenuous de- 
gree, there was never in him a compelling crea- 
tive element, the simple, great idea that would 
be bound to have progeny. His originality was 
the result of accretions and subtle rejections; 
the tact of omission, as he put the phrase. All 
nuance, he has also a tangible charm, which is not 
compounded sweetness and light, as is Cardinal 
Newman, yet is extremely winning. Mr. Greens- 
let happily calls his style African, as opposed to 
the Asiatic profusion of De Quincey, African, 
or Alexandrian, it is a style that is never strongly 
affirmative. It sets forth his Lydian music and 
felicitous scepticism in the precise rehef they de- 
mand. He is essentially a painter of pictures 
and, as with Flaubert, the image and the idea are 
always fused. He would have said that a change 
in a nation's music meant a change in a nation's 
laws. 

But he was not all languor and ecstasy and 
music. When the rumour was circulated in Ox- 
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ford that he had a metaphysical sin on his soul 
it was because he flaunted a brilliant apple- 
green tie and, worse still, because he kept on his 
table a bowl of dried rose-leaves. A hedonist 
indeed! Yet he was writing at the time such an 
involved sentence on style as this: "Since all 
progress of mind consists for the most part in 
differentiation, in the resolution of an obscure 
and complex object into its component aspects, 
it is surely the stupidest of losses to confuse 
things that right reason has put asunder, to lose 
the sentence of achieved distinctions, the dis- 
tinction between poetry and prose, for instance; 
or, to speak more exactly, between the laws and 
characteristic excellences of verse and prose com- 
position." A sentence worthy of old Sir Thomas 
Browne, and not any more immoral than the 
apple-green tie or the dried rose-leaves. Pater 
often made arid and complicated prose; when he 
dealt with abstract ideas he could write like 
Herbert Spencer. He needed a personality to 
set humming in him the warm music of his very 
human sympathies. How much simpler is his 
definition of style in the essay on Pascal: "The 
essence of all good style, whatever its accidents 
may be, is expressiveness." And expressiveness 
is his characteristic charm. 

The Imaginary Portraits, Marius the Epicu- 
rean — not the best-composed of his works, for 
it is rather a sheaf of essays than a closely woven 
study; Gaston de Latour, and the loftily con- 
ceived Plato and Platonism, are so many rich 
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gleanings from the imagination and mental ex- 
perience of this distinguished thinker. True, his 
pose was largely romantic, but the classical or 
the romantic we have ever had and always will 
have with us. As he writes: ''The romantic 
spirit is in reality an ever present, an enduring 
principle in the artistic temperament." Par- 
ticularly true is this of music — no matter in 
what questionable guise it comes to us, whether 
as debased as opera or as the spiritual symphony, 
music is the most romantic art of all, and, ac- 
cording to Pater, the art to which the other arts 
aspire. That he had not the critical tempera- 
ment of, say, Matthew Arnold, may not be denied, 
though both men studied at the feet of Sainte- 
Beuve. Contrary to popular belief. Pater was 
the less impressionistic critic of the two, and 
while he had the urbanity he did not possess the 
superciliousness nor the wit of Arnold, nor the 
ethical bias; his personal method was as sound 
as his contemporary's. As Professor Spingarn 
would say, the province of the critic is to ask: 
*' What has the poet tried to express, and how has 
he expressed it? " Pater always asks these ques- 
tions. As a method tliis is not exactly novel, 
as some believe, but it is wholly effective. The 
critical rule of thumb has with the dealer in moral 
platitudes forever disappeared from the scene. 

And yet — ! After we had reread him we 

came across the exclamation of the Princess in 

Disraeh's Coningsby: "I wish that life were a 

little more Dantesque." And we recall the in- 

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cident in Alton Locke when old Sandy Mackaye 
takes Alton to a London alley and bids him make 
poetry out of it: "Say how ye saw the mouth o' 
hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry, the 
pawnbroker's shop on the one side and the gin 
palace at the other — two monstrous devils, 
eating up men, women, and bairns, body and 
soul. Look at the jaws of the monsters how 
they open and open to swallow in anither victim 
and anither. Write about that! " Not even the 
bait thrown out by Sandy, that classic tragedy 
was involved in the issue — man conquered by 
circumstances — would have tempted Pater to 
handle such a theme. Therefore, when like the 
Princess we feel in the Dante or sublime mood, 
it is not Walter Pater we seek, but Dante, Bee- 
thoven, Goethe, Michelangelo. Pater, however, 
stands the test of rereading, because he wrote 
beautifully of beautiful things. 

A PRECURSOR OF POE. 

During the heat and dust of the recent critical 
powwow over Edgar Allan Poe, why was the 
name of Thomas Holley Chivers not lugged into 
the conflict? Bayard Taylor declared that "one 
of the finest images in modern poetry is in his 
ApoUo": 

"Like cataracts of adamant, uplifted into mountains, 
Making oceans metropolitan, for the splendor of the 
dawn." 

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A superb, a mouth-filling couplet! We defy 
any Western bard or Carolina lyrist to construct 
a like billowing rhythm. Who was Thomas 
Holley Chivers? He was born in Georgia, 1807, 
two years before Poe, and he died in 1858. The 
son of a rich planter and mill-owner, he received 
a classical education. He became a doctor, but 
devoted his time to poetry and science. He knew 
Poe; his poetry for the most part antedated Poe's. 
The unhappy author of The Raven once wrote to 
Chivers: "Please lend me $50 for three months. 
I am so poor and friendless I am half distracted." 
It was for a projected magazine — always the 
magazine mirage ! — that Poe wanted the money. 

Forgotten after his death, the name of Chivers 
came to light in Bayard Taylor's clever book of 
parodies, Diversions of the Echo Club, a book as 
fresh now as the day it was written. In the 
chapter entitled Night the Third Chivers and 
his amazing verse are discussed to the accompani- 
ment of laughter by the various mouthpieces of 
Taylor. Did Poe ever write anything compa- 
rable to these lines? — we mean anything so de- 
lightfully lunatic: 

"Many mellow Cydonian suckets, 

Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine, 
From the ruby rimmed beryline buckets, 

Star gemmed, lily shaped, hyaline; 
Like the sweet, golden goblet found growing 

On the wild emerald cucumber tree, 
Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing, 

Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee." 

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Not only a predecessor of Poe but of Lewis 
Carroll's Jabberwocky and Edward Lear's non- 
sense verse. Taylor remarks of Chivers that 
"Poe finished the ruin of him which Shelley be- 
gan"; but there seems to be another side of the 
story, and in justice to both Poe and Chivers 
it has been adequately told by the late writer 
Joel Benton in a little book of his called In the 
Poe Circle. For the first time we learn some- 
thing of Chivers, of his supernally absurd word- 
building, and of his relations with Poe. After a 
brief inquiry into the reason of Poe's hold on 
the public Benton says: "You cannot harness 
humming-birds as common carriers," and then 
he proceeds to tell of the books written by 
Chivers. There are or were seven or eight vol- 
umes; the British Museum has a set of six. Their 
titles are verbal dreams. Nacooche, or the 
Beautiful Star, The Lost Pleiad, Eonchs of 
Ruby (what are Eonchs?), Memoralia, or Phials 
of Amber, Full of the Tears of Love, VirginaHa, 
or Songs of My Summer Nights, The Sons of 
Usna, Atlanta, or the True Blessed Island of 
Love, and a first book (1834) Conrad and Eudora, 
or the Death of Alonzo; a Threnody. All tes- 
tify to the lush and silly taste of the times. 
What is surprising, however, is to find Poe ante- 
dated in many of his own mannerisms and ex- 
travagances. For example: 

"I went with my Lily Adair — 
With my lamblike Lily Adair — 
With my saintlike Lily Adair — 
With my beautiful, dutiful Lily Adair." 

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Even the refrain of The Bells was anticipated 
by Chivers; or this: 

"In the Rosy Bowers of Aiden 
With her ruby Hps love laden, 
Dwelt the mild, the modest maiden 
Whom Politan called Lenore." 

You rub your eyes; Lenore, Politan! Or one 
of the closing stanzas from the same poem, The 
Vigil of Aiden: 

"And the lips of the damned Demon 
Like the syren to the seaman, 
With the voice of his dear leman 
Answered, 'Never — nevermore!' 
And the old time towers of Aiden 
Echoed, 'Never — nevermore.' " 

Compared with Poe's dignified and artistic 
poem this is mere buckram, yet it preceded Poe 
and he read it, was affected by it, at least his 
phono-motor centres recalled it when he com- 
posed. Swinburne greatly relished Chivers, and 
Benton quotes Bayard Taylor's meeting with 
the poet: "Oh, Chivers, Chivers," said Swin- 
burne in his pecuHar voice, "if you know Chivers, 
give me your hand." Edmund Clarence Sted- 
man heard Swinburne reel off yards of Chivers's 
lines. The truth is Chivers had marked rhyth- 
mic ability and an ear for pompous, pulpy, 
sonorous rhetoric. What a long-breathed phrase 
is this from Avalon: 

"For thou didst tread with fire-ensandalled feet, 
Star crowned, forgiven, 
The burning diapason of the stars so sweet, 
To God in Heaven!" 

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If there is ever a museum founded In which 
will be displayed the "awful examples" of bad, 
nonsensical poetry, Chivers will be king, though 
we might easily cite Hues by Shelley, Poe, 
Browning, Mrs. Browning, and Swinburne that 
make for nonsense, though often resounding. 
Chivers did not rest quietly after reading the 
Poe poems. He openly accused him of pla- 
giarism, and to the controversy which ensued 
Benton has devoted a very interesting chapter. 
Chivers pursued Poe in several magazines, prov- 
ing that his own Lost Pleiad was published in 
1842, therefore several years in advance of The 
Raven. As may be seen by the above quota- 
tion the resemblances are more than fortuitous. 
Poe, like Shakespeare, Milton, Handel, and 
Wagner, knew how to appropriate and adapt. 
Chivers asserted that he, Chivers, was the "first 
poet to make the trochaic rhythm express an 
elegiac theme, and the first to use the euphonic 
alliteration" — we quote Benton — and gives 
an extract of his own to prove his statement. 
It is magnificently humorous, though seriously 
meant by the poet: 

" As an egg when broken never can be mended, but must 
ever 

Be the same crushed egg forever, so shall this dark 
heart of mine, 

Which though broken is still breaking, and shall never- 
more cease aching, 

For the sleep which has no waking — for the sleep 
which now is thine." 

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I prefer The Raven. If Richard Strauss is 
still without a libretto for a new comic opera the 
above- contains a germ for his genius to develop. 
The picture of Chivers which Mr. Benton prints 
in his study shows us a dignified man; with 
suggestions of the statesman and the poet, he 
wears a melancholy expression. He was noted 
for his domestic virtues, suffered greatly when he 
lost his children; and he must have daily read 
quaint dictionaries by the dozen. 

MME. DAUDET'S SOUVENIRS 

After thirty years of married life, Julia, the 
widow of Alphonse Daudet, could write that she 
was never bored an hour; she suffered, she 
worked, and she worried, but not once did she sit 
down and say: "Life is stupid." How far from 
the lethargy, venom, the dulness of many ar- 
tistic households her existence with her beloved 
novelist was may be found in her newly pubhshed 
Souvenirs Autour d'un Groupe Litteraire. This 
volume of fascinating interest for the admirers of 
Daudet also brings with it the reminder that 
time in its flight has not spared the vogue of that 
dehghtful author. Not only is he no longer the 
mode, but we doubt if his work is familiar to this 
generation, with the exception of the miserably 
garbled Sapho, which in its dramatic form is a 
libel on the novel. The more soHd and less 
spiritual Zola endures the indifference of readers ; 
Daudet, impressionistic, romantic, sensitive, 
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has not aged gracefully. Like his own physical 
beauty, his books were for the most part doomed 
soon to disappear. Written without much effort, 
the effervescence of a man of the south, they were 
eagerly read by a greedy public and carelessly 
dropped. The reason is not difficult to explain. 

Alphonse Daudet did not belong to the giant 
race of fiction; to the race of Balzac, Flaubert, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Tolstoy, or Turgenief . His 
swift prose, butterfly fancies, and deHcate though 
shghtly malicious humour were seen at their best 
in Letters From My Mill, Tartarin of Tarascon, 
Numa Roumestan. When he began to reach for 
the laurels of the realist he went out of his 
ordered domain. Too much artist to fail, his 
later efforts betray the struggle. There is too a 
note of rancour in them, partially the result, no 
doubt, of his wasting malady. Sapho contains 
much good workmansliip. It may endure, yet 
we wish Daudet had written something else. 
Why should he compete with Germinie Lacer- 
teux, or Nana. He was au fond the poet, and as 
Zola so happily said: " Daudet's mind gallops in 
the midst of the real, and now and again makes 
sudden leaps into the realm of fancy, for nature 
put him in that borderland where poetry ends 
and reality begins." 

Madame Daudet is too modest about her role 
in the life of the fortunate novelist. She refers 
touchingly to the fact that, as she always read her 
husband's manuscript revisions and proofs, their 
handwriting was often intertwined. In reaUty 
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she was the high wall that protected the frail and 
capricious Provencal flower from the cold wind 
of Parisian life. As Julia Allard she had in 1865 
made her literary debut in L'Art with verse, 
signed Marguerite Tournay. No need here to 
refer to her cultivated prose. She does not al- 
lude to her work in these recollections of such men 
as Flaubert, Edmond de Goncourt, Zola, Gam- 
betta, Leconte de Lisle, Turgenief, Coppee, 
Theophile Gautier, CatuUe Mendes, SuUy-Prud- 
homme, Verlaine, Heredia, Manet, Whistler, 
Augusta Holmes the Irish-French composer, 
Judith Gautier, Victor Hugo, Princess Mathilde, 
Paul de Saint- Victor, Mallarme, Juliette Adam, 
Mistral, "Gyp," Liszt, Theodore de Banville, 
Henry Greville, and the Charpentier family — 
people that made history in their time. 

She once heard that noctambulist and dis- 
ordered genius ViUiers de I'lsle Adam recite The 
Raven of Poe. Verlaine she found outwardly 
ugly, but a true poet. Her chief admiration, after 
her husband, is reserved for Edmond de Gon- 
court. While we are glad to get the story, we 
do not think it should have been made public 
property — that letter sent by the elder Gon- 
court to Flaubert — especially as Madame 
Daudet finds fault with a certain writer for re- 
veaHng personal secrets. The letter in question, 
dated June, 1870, tells Flaubert of a mad resolve 
on the part of Edmond to kill his insane brother 
Jules. The sufferings of the poor fellow har- 
rowed the feehngs of Edmond. He wrote Flau- 
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bert he had a pistol ready and a letter to the 
police, but his courage failed him when Jules 
looked at him with his soft blue eyes full of 
childish astonishment and terror. A startling 
tale, altogether; perhaps one of Goncourt's best 
fictions. 

Madame Daudet saw something of the Hugo 
menage, with Juhe Drouet at its head. Her de- 
scription of the aged poet and his elderly charmer 
who had won him away from Madame Hugo, is 
the most vivid in the volume. She reprints a 
letter from George Sand written shortly before 
her death. She knew Drumont, and she makes 
pictures of social gatherings in which Ambassador 
Beust is shown playing trivial valses of his own 
manufacture. With the Zolas, naturally, the 
Daudets were intimate. Madame Daudet re- 
cords that Madame Zola appeared happy. She 
was happy during the early fight of the romancer, 
when they both were half starved. Whether 
Madame Zola was happy in the last years of the 
novehst's career we cannot say. No doubt Al- 
phonse Daudet had uphill work, but he never had 
to face such odds as did Zola (both were born the 
same year, 1840). The exterior man in the case 
of Daudet was so attractive, his gifts so sympa- 
thetic, that it would have been a surprise if he 
had not conquered. His finely modelled head 
with the black, silky hair falling over his eyes 
(unfortunately myopic), and these same eyes of 
beautiful colour and shape; his beard worn in 
such fashion as to win for him the sobriquet 

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"the Arabian Christ," his sparkling conversa- 
tion and piquant temperament — all these pro- 
claimed his southern, oriental blood. (The name 
of the family was originally David, softened to 
Daudet in Provencal.) 

He had a petulant temper and never forgave 
or forgot the slightest neglect or injury. There's 
a feminine character in his amour propre, so easily 
outraged. We cannot recall a writer whose 
books so bristle with personalities. Daudet 
spitted his enemies — and friends too — in his 
pages. His romans a clef are only worth reading 
nowadays because of the slanderous gossip they 
contain. As art they are nil. Their author never 
pardoned the Academy, and his wife relates 
an unpleasant social encounter she had with an 
old academician supposed to have served as a 
model in The Immortal. Her tact saved the 
situation. And there is the eternal Turgenief 
quarrel. She revives it, as Daudet did in his 
own Recollections of a Literary Man. After Tur- 
genief's death a book of reminiscences appeared 
in which the Russian speaks ahnost contemptu- 
ously of the French circle he frequented when 
hving in Paris. With the Daudets he had been 
most friendly, and the letters he exchanged with 
the good-humoured Flaubert are now in print. 
He helped Zola, Daudet, and Goncourt to pro- 
cure an audience in Russia, even translating their 
articles for a St. Petersburg magazine; there- 
fore he could hardly have played at the end the 
traitor. M. Halperine-Kaminsky has dissipated 
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the mystery by proving that the Memoirs con- 
tained interpolations or were written by Sacher- 
Masoch, a Slav writer of unsavoury fame. But 
the Daudets would accept no explanations, and 
it is sad to see Mme. Daudet still beKeving the 
ancient lie. The trouble is that Alphonse Dau- 
det was excessively sensitive to criticism and 
Turgenief did write once that he found much of 
the work of the Parisian naturalistic novelists 
"smelled of the lamp." This included Flaubert, 
Zola, Goncourt, Daudet. He often chided Flau- 
bert for his frenzy over his corrections. It was 
Turgenief's motto, as it was Whistler's, that in 
art aU traces of the mechanical processes should 
vanish; his own effortless and wellnigh perfect 
style is an admirable exemplar of this belief. 
He felt the strain in Daudet's later novels — the 
strain after qualities he did not possess. The 
early charm had almost disappeared; but Dau- 
det would not tolerate the Idea. Hence his 
bitterness regarding Turgenief — a man who 
towers over him as a creator and an artist. And 
it should be remembered that Alphonse Daudet 
was a big "seller" when his friends were not. 
He was childishly vain of his successes. 

After Flaubert's death the Sunday afternoon 
gatherings of poets, painters, novelists, musi- 
cians, philosophers, and other celebrities at his 
little house near the Pare Mongeau ceased, and 
Edmond de Goncourt's grenier at Auteuil be- 
came the rallying-point for all the rising talent in 
Paris. This pretty maison d'artiste^ the Villa 

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Montmorenci, may be seen to-day. It has be- 
come since Goncourt's death in 1896 the Acade- 
mie Goncourt, though it must be admitted no 
imposing talent has as yet emerged from its 
portals. Madame Daudet was present at these 
meetings, where art and Uterature were discussed 
with an intensity and an acuity that seems al- 
most ludicrous in our days of machine-made 
plays, novels, operas, and pictures. Fancy these 
men of the Second Empire — Flaubert, Zola, Gon- 
court, Daudet, and a dozen others — fighting 
over such obsolete literary ideals as artistic 
prose, form, atmosphere, character, and environ- 
ment. You rub your eyes with astonishment. 
What an object-lesson is the group of which 
Madame Daudet writes so lucidly, for young 
fiction-mongers who typewrite two novels in a 
twelvemonth and then boast of their "art" and 
their many editions. 

THE DE LENZ BEETHOVEN 

The resurrection of a once-famous and long- 
forgotten book is always an interesting event, 
but will the present generation of readers enjoy 
what was the mode over half a century ago? 
To be sure a classic is always a classic; the book 
we allude to never pretended to be anything more 
than a gossipy chronicle boasting of personal 
charm about music and musicians, and the music 
of Beethoven especially. Imagine a Pepys of 
music, a Russian Pepys, saturated with French 
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and German cultures, himself a pianist of un- 
usual ability and the pupil of Chopin, Liszt, 
Tausig, Henselt — not to mention others of 
lesser celebrity — and the name of Wilhelm de 
Lenz may be familiar to some. He was born in 
1808, at St. Petersburg; he died 1883. He was 
a Russian Councillor. He possessed means. He 
had musical talent; and he was simply a divine 
gossip. No such intimate book dealing with 
Liszt, Chopin, Tausig, and Henselt was ever 
written like The Great Piano Virtuosi of our 
Time (translated by Madeleine R. Baker). No 
one has, with the possible exception of Amy Fay, 
given us such easel pictures of these musicians 
as men — Miss Fay, of course, was not a Chopin 
pupil; but she studied under the three other 
heroes of the keyboard. In the Biographical 
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by 
Dr. Theodore Baker and Richard Aldrich, De 
Lenz's birth year is given as 1804 and his "de" 
is there a "von." Need it be added that there 
will be no "conflict of authorities" over the two 
dates; De Lenz is hardly as important a per- 
sonage in the world of music as Chopin ; besides 
in Russia they do not fabricate with such ease as 
in Warsaw baptismal certificates. Chopin has 
already had three or four. More will follow as 
each new biography appears. M. Calvocoressi 
is the authority for the 1808 birth date. He 
prints it in his introduction to that long-lost vol- 
ume of De Lenz, Beethoven: et ses Trois Styles 
(Brentano's). 

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Wliile the book reads as fresh as yesterday, De 
Lenz is not a profound critic of music, and he 
too often writes in the inflated romantic vein of 
his times. Beethoven, a god for the few, was 
then compared with Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, 
Goethe, and Victor Hugo. Liszt has written 
some mouth-filling phrases about him, Wagner 
went him several better in the way of muddy 
metaphysics and cryptic burrowings, while De 
Lenz when he becomes excited could distance 
either of them. But Bettina Brentano, the mer- 
curial and rhapsodic friend of both Beethoven 
and Goethe, leads De Lenz in the chase. Cal- 
vocoressi, the author of several monographs of 
composers, has edited De Lenz's French and fur- 
nished a brief introduction. Berlioz praised 
The Three Styles of Beethoven, as Calvocoressi 
points out; even if he had failed to do so it 
wouldn't much matter, for De Lenz quotes the 
French composer's opinion with a delightful 
smack of the Hps. Lucidly for posterity our 
musical Pepys was not a modest man. A very 
human, however. 

The particular charm of the Beethoven [we 
prefer to caU it thus, not forgetting, however, 
that De Lenz wrote later (1855-1860) Beethoven: 
cine Kunststudie] is its discursiveness. No mat- 
ter how deeply the author may delve into the 
technical mysteries of a sonata or symphony, he 
soon flies away on the wings of an anecdote. It 
may be said without fear of contradiction that 
this book did yeoman's service in its day, and 
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why it dropped out of sight is incomprehensible. 
In 1852 there was no Grove, no Thayer. De Lenz 
drew on Schindler and other friends of Beethoven 
and he had this advantage over critics who fol- 
lowed him — he spoke to the men who had been 
Beethoven's intimates, and as early as 1827. He 
played the Beethoven sonatas when they were 
caviare to the musical world, and once aston- 
ished Liszt with the performance of Weber's 
A-flat Sonata, a work which no one in Paris had 
ever heard. We prefer De Lenz's analysis of 
the pianoforte sonatas to those of Elterleins. He 
is painstaking and he follows Fetis in the classi- 
fication of the sonatas; this same rubric of three 
styles has its merits. It is convenient, a species 
of critical milestones. 

But when De Lenz reaches the last five sonatas 
he flounders; half praises, goes into ecstasies over 
the first movement of the noble C-minor sonata, 
opus III, yet balks at the Arietta and variations. 
To him it is the tonal weaving of a man near the 
edges of an abyss. Nor did he note, though an 
old pupil of Chopin (1842 he studied with him 
at Paris), the curious similarity of the first few 
bars of the Chopin B-flat minor sonata and those 
of the Beethoven C minor. Both are bold and 
tragic. The intervals are suggestively alike in 
Stimmung, though not precisely so. But whereas 
Beethoven built of his preluding bars a massive 
entrance to his cathedral of glorious sounds, 
Chopin jumped from his fiery porch into a som- 
bre dramatic narrative. We need hardly be sur- 
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prised at the inability of De Lenz to appreciate 
the grandeurs of the last five Beethoven sonatas. 
A greater than he, the greatest composer — and 
we may add music critic — of France, Hector 
Berlioz, confessed his mental paralysis in the pres- 
ence of Tristan and Isolde. The introduction 
was for him always the riddle of the Sphinx. 
Neither its emotional curve nor its extraordi- 
nary eloquence and beauty of colouring made an 
appeal to BerHoz. Was he sincere in this? Yet, 
Beethoven student as he was, he might have 
solved the enigma by analysing the introduction 
to the Pathetic Sonata of Beethoven. The germ 
of the Tristan harmonic progressions and the 
plangent eloquence are there compressed into a 
few bars. One might apostrophise Beethoven as 
did De Quincey when he uttered those matchless 
words at the conclusion of his study of the knock- 
ing at the door theme in Macbeth. 

But over De Lenz there is no need to become 
serious. His sketch of Beethoven's life is stufifed 
with errors as weU as the facts of the day. 
Among other things he remarks that the com- 
poser passed the greater part of his life in a 
cabaret at Graben, outside of Vienna (page 205) ; 
and asks with comic intensity how could the 
creator of that immortal masterpiece the C- 
sharp sonata (Moonlight, so called) dine at one 
o'clock in the afternoon? Scratch a Russian and 
you come upon a Parisian. But what esprit, 
what sheer joy in the telKng of stories are to be 
found in this book. The anecdotes of pianists 
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are many; some of them he transferred to his 
later book on Liszt, Chopin, and Tausig. Who 
but De Lenz could have discovered that Leopold 
de Meyer was a "Master of a Pennsylvania Free- 
mason's lodge"? The lively writer calls Bach 
"that Sorbonne in harmony"; and of Zelter he 
said that he was the "Fetis of his time," not a 
superficial comparison. He literally goes for 
Mozart's biographer, OuHbischefT, for attacking 
Beethoven and characteristically concludes that 
as a critic Ouhbischeff might be described in the 
words of the old vaudeville ditty " J'ai ete marie, 
il est vrai, mais si peu, si peu!" Evidently De 
Lenz as an amateur critic of music realised the 
force of the Arabian proverb : "One who has been 
stung by a snake shivers at the sight of a string." 

Beethoven, too, was among the supermen. He 
is reported as exclaiming — and we hear the 
prophetic rumble of Zarathustra's voice — "A 
superior man should never be confounded with a 
bourgeois." This speech, no doubt authentic, 
the composer matched with his brotherly report 
to Johann van Beethoven as to the possession of 
brains. 

One of the interesting anecdotes concerns 
Wehrstaedt. Who was Wehrstaedt? He was a 
professor of the pianoforte residing at Geneva 
about 1827, He only knew the first three studies 
of Cramer (the Venerable Bede of the Piano- 
forte, as De Lenz happily styles him), the A-flat 
sonata of Weber (Rosenthal's warhorse to-day) 
and the sonata opus 26, A-flat, by Beethoven. 
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This admirable musical maniac spent his long life 
with musical baggage so slender in size. He had 
never visited Chamounix, although his sojourn 
in Geneva was protracted, nor would he pretend 
to understand how any one could love Mont 
Blanc while loving the music of Weber. He al- 
ways kept his hat on when teaching or playing. 
In 1828 De Lenz met him, played for him, select- 
ing the A-flat sonata of Beethoven. *'Why not 
a galop by Herz?" interrupted the sardonic 
Wehrstaedt. "Because I love it," responded 
the brave young Russian; who writes that he 
had had many good masters and comprehended 
no more the meaning of this sonata than mice 
do of the architecture in the grange through 
which they scurry. Wehrstaedt pushed him 
from the keyboard and played the sonata as 
no one else could play it, save Franz Liszt (then 
seventeen years of age). Over a certain trill on 
the first page Wehrstaedt declared that he had 
spent twenty years. Nowadays your venture- 
some mechanical piano-player can play this 
particular trill in octaves. Such pyramidal 
labours for such trifles, you will exclaim. But 
Wehrstaedt was secretly happy. Every day he 
did the same thing, watched as the years rolled 
by his leaps and bounds toward the promised 
land of perfection. 



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IDEAS AND IMAGES 

It is a holy and wholesale custom with cer- 
tain French authors to collect and publish an- 
nually in book form their fugitive essays. As a 
rule, the material, notwithstanding its heteroge- 
neous nature, is worthy of a second perusal. It 
is hardly necessary to add that the essay as a 
hterary exercise, almost as extinct as the dodo 
in America, is still vigorously cultivated in 
France. Anatole France, Maurice Barres, Le- 
maitre, Faguet, De Gourmont, and many other 
masters of the feuilleton practise this gentle art 
of reprinting, and there is often as much variety 
of subject in one of their books as may be found, 
for example, in Plays, Acting, and Music by 
Arthur Symons. In the case of so inveterate an 
essayist as Remy de Gourmont his readers are 
always assured of a feast of good things. De 
Gourmont is luckily a master critic who has 
not yet "arrived" — in the sense of Bourget or 
France or Lemaitre. An aristocratic radical, a 
lover of paradox, a profound scholar, a Latinist 
of the first rank, his supple, smihng prose is a 
mask that conceals much wisdom, much irony, 
many disillusionments. For the man in the 
street he is caviar. He sits in an ivory tower, 
but on the ground floor, from which he may 
saunter and rub elbows with life. He has been 
variously denounced as a subtle sophist, a cor- 
rupt cynic, a hater of his kind, and a philosopher 

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without a philosophy. He may possess a little 
of all these terrific attributes, but he is also 
something else. He is very human, very gay, 
very tolerant, very charming, and very erudite. 
He is more sincere than Anatole France — which 
still leaves him a fair margin of irony — and he 
is infinitely less egotistical than Barres. He 
deals with actuaHties as well as parchment learn- 
ing, and if his tales are salty in their Gallicism 
we can only excuse him with the remark that 
they order such humour better in France than 
in England or America. A literary critic of the 
first standing, De Gourmont is hated and feared 
by the hypocrites, puritans, and pharisees who 
have during the last few years made their voices 
heard and their prejudices felt in Paris. He 
never spares them — please remember that Tar- 
tuffe was a Frenchman — though they sit in the 
seats of the mighty, whether professors, politi- 
cians, or editors. 

His Promenades Litteraires is the third vol- 
ume of the series bearing that characteristically 
StendhaHan title. De Gourmont promenades 
among a lot of interesting subjects, some choses 
vues, others the record of his browsings in eigh- 
teenth and seventeenth century authors. He re- 
cites some of the important facts in the critical 
career of the late Ferdinand Brunetiere, and no 
essay in this volume so reveals the catholicity of 
its author, for between the saturnine and ill- 
tempered Brunetiere and the urbane author of 
Le Latin Mystique there was little beyond their 

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love of the classics to make them fraternal. Tem- 
peraments, and consequently points of view, i^ 
were totally at variance. But Gourmont does not 
hesitate to lay a laurel of praise upon the tomb 
of the dead critic. He begins by asking the 
wherefore of the conventional distinction be- 
tween the creator and the critic. Why the sev- 
eral hierarchies? He does not take refuge in 
that very banal definition — also hybrid — 
creative criticism. As if sound criticism could 
be aught but creative. He demands to know 
why Taine should be called a critic and Octave 
Feuillet a creator. If a history of literature is 
written the author must construct as well as 
criticise. Both novelist and critic are creators of 
values; the former in the category of sensibility, 
the latter in the order of intelligence. Why, for 
example, should we consider Brunetiere in- 
ferior to Bourget? Where are the majority of 
the novelists of yesteryear? The contempo- 
raries of Sainte-Beuve, who created fiction, con- 
stituted a unique group. Balzac, Stendhal, 
Flaubert, De Goncourt presumably will live; 
but it is difficult to imagine any single man of 
the lot outliving the reputation of Sainte-Beuve. 
Then Gourmont plunges from the general 
into the particular. He shows us Brunetiere ab- 
sorbed in the Darwinian doctrines which about 
1890 began to enter into the general circulation 
of French Hterature. Previous to that Brune- 
tiere had passed for a revolutionary; he who 
later became the leader of the reactionaries. His 

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scheme was to fabricate a vast critical edifice 
on evolutionary lines. Literary history was no 
longer to be a series of portraits after the manner 
of Sainte-Beuve, but a co-ordinated work in 
which each epoch would in Taine fashion (or 
Darwinian) produce its various genres influenced 
by the milieu; and the evolution of these genres 
would be traced with an iron pen. Science was a 
word seldom absent from his pages in those days. 
A change supervened. Brunetiere became re- 
ligious. Hence his famous phrase, "The bank- 
ruptcy of science." A bankruptcy of meta- 
physics, adds Gourmont. Nevertheless the 
phrase stuck. Brunetiere made capital out of it. 
He fell to hating his own times, like all idealists 
and hyperaesthetic persons, took refuge in the 
literature of the seventeenth century and with ad- 
mirable results. But his hatred of life revenged 
itself in attacking living men, whose shoe-strings 
he was not worthy of unlatching. Nor did he 
spare the dead. That over-praised study of Bal- 
zac is full of grudging spleen and inept criticism, 
while his abuse of Baudelaire caused many to re- 
mark upon his lack of critical urbanity. 

Brunetiere's method was the historic. He 
was exact to pedantry. A rationalist, he for- 
got, as Gourmont finely puts it, that the domain 
of reason is very limited and that logic, according 
to Ribot, is nearly always the logic of sentiments. 
His complete work may be considered as a valu- 
able repertory of ideas and literary judgments; 
but cold, but dry. The "ferment of idealism" 
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is missing, the dislike of originality, the worship 
of the accepted, bulk too large. He was a learned 
student and a small man. 

Mr, Brownell has written regarding the old 
crux of criticism and creation that "what criti- 
cism lacks and what will always be a limitation to 
its interest and its power is the element of beauty, 
which it of necessity largely foregoes in its concen- 
tration upon truth," but "it is only in criticism 
that the thought of an era becomes articulate, 
crystallised, coherently communicated." We are 
back at the contention of Gourmont that in 
essentials criticism and creation are alike. Both 
are a criticism of life. When you have need of 
metaphysics, asserts the Parisian writer, you 
have always need of religion. Metaphysic is the 
first rung of the mystic ladder — a statement 
seemingly calculated to have given William James 
great pleasure. 

At the end of the year 1889 Remy de Gour- 
mont paid a visit to the Ministry of the Interior. 
He held in his hand the manuscript of a story 
named Stratagems, and as he wished to dedicate 
it to Joris Karl Huysmans he went to the office 
of that writer armed with a letter of introduction. 
Huysmans was then assistant chief in the Depart- 
ment of Surety and received the young man with 
amiability. After they discovered that they both 
knew and admired Viliiers de I'lsle Adam the 
ice v/as broken. The elder man accepted the 
dedication, and when five o'clock came he seized 
his hat and with "the joy of a dog that is loosed 

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from his chain " he began to walk and talk. Gour- 
mont tells us that in his detested office he wrote 
nearly all his books. La-Bas was represented 
there by its original manuscript, written in clear 
script with few erasures. Huysmans wrote 
slowly, deliberately, and little at a time, but 
like Zola it was the daily drop of water that 
wore away the stone, and like Anthony Trollope 
he could resume his page after an interruption 
with perfect tranquillity. Gourmont, who is 
quaHfied to speak, declares that Huysmans was 
not well grounded in his humanities. The page, 
so fascinating for the lover of original style, in 
A Rebours, devoted to the Latin poets of the de- 
cadence, was condensed after enormous travail- 
ing from Ebert's tomes on the subject (Histoire 
generale de la litterature en Occident). The 
French writer boiled down to a clear essence the 
facts he needed and then verbally reorchestrated 
them. He was astonished at the genuine classic 
erudition of Gourmont and wrote an engaging 
preface to his Le Latin Mystique. We quite 
agree with Gourmont that A Rebours has liter- 
ary antiseptic in it to preserve it from decay. 
The later religious studies will endure, though 
hardly on the book-shelves of the profane world. 
A Rebours is a history of an aesthetic period, and 
as such, apart from the magnificence of its exe- 
cution, will be saved as vital hterature. 

Of interest is the gossip about the habits of 
Huysmans. He arrived after his second break- 
fast at his office in the neighbourhood of eleven 
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BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

o'clock. He smoked cigarettes, stared at his 
pet posters, read, wrote, and incidentally at- 
tended to his duties. The French Government 
is liberal in those matters, despite the sordid 
pictures of clerical Hfe sketched by De Maupas- 
sant. Nor has Huysmans spared the rod. He 
was his own M. Folantin, always grumbling at 
the dulness of his life, at the wretched quality of 
restaurant food. With Gourmont he went every 
afternoon to sip Holland bitters at the Cafe 
Caron, which he has celebrated in his vivid prose 
etching Habitues de Cafe. There a singular 
atmosphere reigned. Old customers would pro- 
test if their favourite corners were annexed by 
newcomers; dominoes were not tolerated on ac- 
count of the noise they made on marble-topped 
tables; loud conversation was prohibited; pipes, 
too — altogether a cafe de luxe. The cooking 
and wines were excellent and not dear. Several 
editors, poets, and politicians were steady at- 
tendants. After the place went to smash because 
of its exclusiveness Huysmans selected the Cafe 
de Flore as its successor. Again over his bitters, 
himself embittered by temperament, he exposed 
his views on art and literature to his young 
friend. To call them extreme is putting the case 
mildly. He was sardonic, ironic, splenetic, rag- 
ing. He never spoke well of any one (when his 
back was turned Gourmont also came in for his 
rating). Huysmans attacked religion, society, 
art. His speech was rank in its frankness. He 
took a delight in the abuse of shocking vocables. 

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His Flemish nature detested polite deceptions. 
His books, relates our author, are chaste in com- 
parison with his conversations, which is saying 
much. He smashed the reputations of Bourget 
and De Maupassant, both former comrades, for 
"arriving" ahead of him. He never had any 
doubt as to his own artistic superiority. In a 
word, a "knocker" of the type — if Huysmans 
could ever be classified — described by Daudet 
in Jack. 

Now for the other side of this rather discour- 
aging picture. A tender-hearted chap, always 
doing favours, even to the men he abused, going 
out of his way — and he loathed all physical 
effort — to promote the cause of some stranger 
whose work had appealed to him. He was very 
charitable and always hard up because of this 
generosity. The women of course plundered his 
sympathies, and he wasted time over many who 
were devoid of talent. However, he put them 
in his books, and with what malice, what verve. 

It will doubtless relieve many sensitive souls 
to know that the episode of the Black Mass, so 
horrible for either sick or healthy nerves, in La- 
Bas is pure imagination. There never was any 
such occurrence in the life of Huysmans — for a 
good reason. If Paris had held so absurd and 
vile a ceremony he would not have hesitated to 
ferret it out. He was curious about unhealthy 
things. He was a dyspeptic with a thirst for the 
infinite. A certain Mme. de C. introduced him 
to the Abbe Mugnier, who converted him. Great 
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was Gourmont's surprise to hear of this conver- 
sion. He had always known that a religious /ow(f 
existed in Huysmans, but his constant mockeries 
and blasphemies had deceived him. Astonished 
too he was when he found out that Huysmans 
was deeply interested in black magic, spiritualism, 
table-tipping. Indeed, De Gourmont doesn't 
hesitate to say that his friend entered the church 
through the rather dubious gate of spiritualism. 
All roads lead to Rome. 

Besides these souvenirs of Huysmans and 
Brunetiere (who died drinking a glass of cham- 
pagne) this book of Remy de Gourmont is full of 
suggestive studies written in a captivating style. 

THE ETERNAL PHILANDERER 

In France contemporary literary piety is de- 
voted to the celebration of a marking date, 1811, 
the year of the appearance of Chateaubriand's 
once famous Journey from Paris to Jerusalem 
(Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem) , the pattern of 
all the picturesque travels of the last century. 
When Goethe said that Hugo and the Romanti- 
cists came from Chateaubriand he could have 
added that Chateaubriand himself was a joint 
product of Rousseau and Ossian, and a veritable 
prose Byron. We remember seeing a picture of 
the Vicomte Francois Rene de Chateaubriand 
(i 768-1848), his sHm figure wrapped in a melo- 
dramatic cloak, his hyperion curls ruflSed by the 
wind that swept from the sea across the bleak 

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promontory where he posed in the face of an 
approaching tempest. The book of poems in- 
separable from such a composition was at his 
feet. Ossianic was the conception, and you 
could sympathise with the romantic ladies of the 
first half of the nineteenth century, who read 
Rene, read Atala, read The Genius of Christian- 
ity, and worshipped their creator. 

He was a genuine force in French literature, 
indeed, in the Hterature of the world. As senti- 
mentalist and sensualist he ranks after Rousseau, 
and he much resembles Rousseau in his constant 
intermingHng of sensuality and rehgion. He in- 
vented a new form of morbid sensibility that is 
in the very bones of French letters to-day — 
Pierre Loti is its latest exponent — and consider, 
too, that he wrote Atala in 1801 and Rene in 1802, 
and thus set the pace for the fiction of the cen- 
tury. In the region of sensibility it was not 
difficult for such an accomplished virtuoso to 
fiddle across the semitone that barely divides 
the sentimental from the sensuous. Always he 
sounded with precision the sultry enharmonics of 
the senses ; and the sounds, set in highly coloured 
and magnificent prose, ravished the ears of the 
blue-stockings as well as damsels with nodding 
curls. Chateaubriand was one more reincar- 
nation of the eternal philanderer in life and liter- 
ature alike. 

Andre Beaunier has Just published a study of 
the loves of the great writer. He calls his book 
Trois Amies de Chateaubriand, and tells again 
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the rather dolorous though fascinating stories 
of Pauhne de Beaumont, Juliette Recamier, 
and Hortense Allart. These three distinguished 
women exerted a real influence upon Chateau- 
briand, a man who in love was infidelity itself. 
He early discovered, as other historical person- 
ages before him — and since — that to succeed 
one must take an attitude in life, especially must 
one maintain this attitude toward one's self. Be 
always a hero before your looking-glass, said, in 
effect, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and Chateau- 
briand. The designer of the portrait we once 
saw had caught the prosateur across the vesti- 
bule of his inmost self. He was a poseur, but he 
was also a genius, and his career was adventurous. 
He secretly detested Napoleon, being a nobleman 
born and a legitimist, though the master of 
France sent him to Rome as secretary to the 
embassy, and later as an ambassador to the 
Valais. But he was equally dissatisfied under 
Louis XVIII and Charles X, though one mon- 
arch made him ambassador to England, the 
other to Rome. In fact, his dissatisfaction was 
never-ending. 

The lion in the pathway of Chateaubriand was 
ennui, a monstrous boredom with men, women, 
and things, particularly women. His egotism 
grazed the fabulous; so massive, so self-centred, 
so firmly enclosed in the depths of his soul was 
his self-love that he never even deigned to show 
it, after the fashion of smaller men. There it 
was, in repose, yet disdainful, revolving at ter- 

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rific speed, yet not showing its velocity. Kinetic 
stability, we might term such a passion. What a 
study for George Meredith would have been this 
temperament, instead of that faddle Sir Wil- 
loughby Patterne. Time, with its sly, ironic 
sense, has seen to it that this overwhelming, this 
superb paladin, this prince of the vocabulary, is 
now chiefly remembered by his fellow-country- 
men, and all other cultivated nations, as the 
name of an appetisingly prepared beef-steak 
while Recamier is better known as the woman 
who wore so becomingly an Empire gown. 

M. Beaunier first asks if a work of literary art 
is sufficient in itself, and answers in the negative. 
He might as well have spared himself the pains 
of putting the question. He sorrowfully con- 
fesses that few books are written nowadays with- 
out some "useful" purpose, usually sociological. 
Sociology is a blight on literature; it has given 
birth to innumerable libraries of sordid grey 
pamphlets, tracts that masquerade as books, 
dismal statistics, and to fiction stupid, hysterical, 
prophetic, and an amassing of inutile "facts" 
inartistically presented. Say "art " to any of the 
young writers of our times — with a few hon- 
ourable exceptions, and these exceptions are 
pronounced immoral — and a volley of con- 
temptuous adjectives is launched at your head. 
Art is for verbal voluptuaries. Art is for hedo- 
nists, sinister word; art is for slaves of their 
senses, not for free, self-inflated, socialistic men 
of commanding intellect. M. Beaunier concludes 

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that Chateaubriand, an artist in prose with few 
equals in French Hterature, or any literature for 
that matter, would be an anomaly if he were alive 
and writing at the present time. 

However, he doesn't devote many pages to 
aesthetic polemic. He is chiefly interested in the 
love affairs of the celebrated writer who had con- 
ceived his life as a work of art and could say "one 
must present to the world only the beautiful." 
But in working out the practical equation of 
such a theory, a man so finely organised and self- 
conscious as Chateaubriand may fall either into 
the pit of selfish satisfaction, an amateur of the 
emotions, or into the ecstatic gloom of the mystic. 
In both cases a woman's heart will suffer, and 
women's hearts did rebound from the stony, self- 
ish cuirass of Chateaubriand. He loved Pauline 
de Beaumont, but not as she loved him. A brill- 
iant member of a brilhant circle, most of whom 
went under the knife of the guillotine, PauHne 
narrowly escaped a similar fate. In Rome she 
spent happy days, though she was attainted with 
consumption. The correspondence is interest- 
ing. Joubert, a mutual friend, has said memo- 
rable things of this romance. He saw clearly 
that Chateaubriand had allowed himself to be 
loved, that he played alternately hot and cold, 
and, experienced grande dame as was Mme. 
de Beaumont, she was the Hve mouse in the 
clutches of this accomplished cat. He became 
entangled, nevertheless, in other affairs, the most 
notorious of which was his friendship for Mme. 

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de Castellane. The police tracked them, we 
suppose on the general principle that great 
writers should be watched at all times. To his 
"Dehe," Mme. C, he wrote often; this was in 
1823, when he was fifty-five years of age. A 
certain Mme. Hamelin supervened; like Sten- 
dhal he mixed up his amorous affairs. He knew 
Stendhal, and, naturally, disUked him. So did 
Hugo for that matter. All three were phi- 
landerers. Pauline de Beaumont died of con- 
sumption; some say of a broken heart. Chateau- 
briand in his memoirs bitterly deplores the cold- 
ness some men show to the living, and in his 
gorgeous rhetoric paints the agony of the sur- 
vivor, who can never repair his ill deeds. What 
rhetoric! Mme. de Beaumont was buried at 
Rome in the Church of Saint Louis des Frangais. 
The affair with that enigmatic but beautiful 
Juliette Bernard, the Lyonnaise, better known 
to the world as Mme. Recamier, the friend of 
Mme. de Stael, immortalised by the portrait 
sketch by David in the Louvre, was the most re- 
markable in the long fife of Chateaubriand ; and 
what a length the intimacy lasted. He first met 
her in 1801; again in 1814, and after the death 
of Mme. de Stael in 181 7 their relations became 
friendly, and so continued until his death in 1848 
(July 4). Juliette outHved him one year (May 
II, 1849). Curiosity has never been stifled on 
the theme of Mme. Recamier. Her marriage 
was a mere convention, on that all authorities 
agree. But what were her real relations with 
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Chateaubriand? Here we stumble across an in- 
soluble enigma. The truth may be that she was 
neither the wife nor the mistress of any man. 
Before the advent of the novelist, whose books 
are an ill-concealed autobiography, the dominat- 
ing influence of her life was " Corinne," the mas- 
cuHne, brilliant Anna Louise Germaine Necker, 
Mme. de Stael, detested by Napoleon, who once 
roughly told her that a woman's chief business 
in life was to give the state citizens. Certainly 
Chateaubriand won no favour with Juliette Re- 
camier until after De Stael's death. However, 
the case may not be so puzzling to psychop- 
athists. Mme. Recamier lies in the Montmar- 
tre Cemetery. 

With the passing of the years Chateaubriand 
became a lean, unsHppered pantaloon ; stone-deaf 
and feeble, he daily mounted, with the aid of 
canes and his valet, the staircase of the Ab- 
baye-au-Bois, where in her decKning years lived 
that sweet old lady Mme. Recamier. She was 
almost blind. Yet she received him gently, 
listened to his grumbling, and inevitably played 
for him a faded piano piece by Stiebelt (of all 
composers, sugar- water for canary birds) . When 
he died she was at his pillow. He had deceived 
her, she loved him; he loved himself, and she 
gave him her whole life. 

The episode with the gay Hortense AUart was 
not so pathetic. She was called "une petite 
George Sand," because she wrote and loved so 
much. She did not break her heart over the in- 

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fidelities of Chateaubriand, for she committed 
a few herself. M. Beaunier, with the rigorous 
logic of his race, has compiled a time-table of the 
lady's sentimental voyages: from 1826-1829, 
Capponi, a young ItaHan hero of the risorgimento ; 
from 1829 to 1 83 1, Chateaubriand; from 1831 
to 1836, Bulwer Lytton; from 1837 to 1840, 
"pendant quelques jours," Sainte-Beuve; from 
1843 to 1845 she was the wife of M. de Meritens. 
A friend of Thiers, a fond mother, she died in the 
odour of sanctity in 1879, and is buried at Bourg- 
la-Reine. When she first encountered Chateau- 
briand at Rome he regretfully exclaimed: *'Ah! 
if I had back my fifty years." Thereupon the 
sprightly lady replied: "Why not wish for 
twenty-five?" "No," moodily returned the am- 
bassador, "fifty will do." Which recalls the 
witty design of Forain, representing a very old 
man apostrophising the shadow of the past: 
"Oh! if I only had again my sixty-five years." 
We forgot the names of Charlotte Ives, Del- 
phine de Custine, the little Countess de Noailles, 
who in Spain with the novelist called herself 
Dolores: all friends of the puissant one. He 
nearly married Charlotte Ives in London in a mo- 
ment of self-forgetfulness. He had married in 
1792 a lady, Mile. Buisson de Lavigne, who was 
a model wife for many years. She was well re- 
ceived at Mme. Recamier's weekly receptions. 
Philanderers usually have good wives, and phi- 
landerers are generally anxious that their various 
feminine friends be on good terms. It makes life 

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smoother. In this respect Chateaubriand was 
lucky, for he was an ideal philanderer. 

THE NEW ENGLISH NIETZSCHE 

A new translation of the works of Friedrich 
Nietzsche is now in progress and seventeen vol- 
umes have been issued. The edition will be 
complete in eighteen volumes and is to range 
from the five lectures On the Future of Our 
Educational Institutions, delivered by Nietzsche 
when professor of classical philology at Basle, to 
the autobiographical "Ecce Homo," which saw 
the light of publication (in an expensive edition) 
last year. This first complete and authorised 
(by Frau Foerster-Nietzsche of Weimar) trans- 
lation is edited by Dr. Oscar Levy of London. 
Dr. Levy is a citizen of the world, author of Re- 
vival of Aristocracy. As a follower of Goethe, 
Stendhal, and Nietzsche his views on England 
and EngHsh institutions are distinctly stirring. 
Rather than be outdone by Heine and Stendhal, 
or by Nietzsche, he has said things in print about 
England which make the famous Egyptian 
Speech read like mere sophomoric vapourings. 
In the present series he has renewed the charge in 
an editorial note and an introductory essay, both 
of which contain many vigorous ideas. For 
instance, he utters the timely warning to students 
of Nietzsche " to read him slowly, to think over 
what they have read and not to accept too read- 
ily a teaching which they have only half under- 

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stood." "By a too ready acceptance of Nietzsche 
it has come to pass," continues Dr. Levy, "that 
his enemies are as a rule a far superior body of 
men to those who call themselves his eager and 
enthusiastic followers." Refreshing candour this 
from a Nietzschean editor. 

The truth is that a wave of Nietzscheism is 
sweeping English-reading coimtries. Ibsen never 
had the personal hold on his auditors that 
Nietzsche now has, but the very brilUancy of 
phrasing and clarity of expression are pitfalls 
for the all too human and unwary student. 
Nietzsche is never more enigmatic than when 
wearing the mask of mocking Greeklike blithe- 
ness (heiterkeit), and already the path of his 
progress is strewn with the bleaching bones of 
his reckless commentators. Already the half- 
baked in philosophy are sending letters to the 
newspapers and alas ! picking out his most poetic 
and least viable ideas for idolatry. This new 
edition, containing, as it does, such sterling 
studies as The Birth of Tragedy and Homer and 
Classical Philology (his inaugural address de- 
livered at Basle University, May 28, 1869), will 
show the hop o' the moon " Nietzscheans " that 
back of the great poet was the sane thinker and 
man of science. Not that we take exception to 
the doctrines, if doctrines they are, of the Super- 
man and the Eternal Recurrence, but that we be- 
lieve these poetic and metaphysical conceptions 
to be of less value than his ideas on social sub- 
jects. Nietzsche, it should be remembered, was 
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a great psychologist, perhaps greater as such than 
as the formulator of a philosophic system. His 
Superman is a counsel of perfection; the Eternal 
Return an old Oriental idea newly presented. 
As to his escaping metaphysics, there may be 
quoted his own desire for a new art, "the art of 
metaphysical comfort." That much misunder- 
stood man Max Stirner once in writiiig of the 
economic part that money plays in Hfe declared 
that " it will always be money." For thinkers it 
will always be "metaphysics," let them be "real- 
ists" as Nietzsche beheved himself to be or 
idealists or even our friends with the smiling 
modern face, the pragmatists. You can't make 
bricks without straw, symphonies without coun- 
terpoint, or philosophy without metaphysics. 
Therefore Nietzsche is no more a short cut to 
the philosophic Parnassus than Kant or Hegel. 
The danger of the Nietzschean deluge is this: 
the very culture-philistines he so heartily de- 
spised when ahve are going about with tags and 
aphorisms caked in their daily conversation. 
They utterly mistake his liberty for license, not 
reaUsing the narrow and tortuous paths he has 
prepared for his true disciples. Wagner was for 
years obscured by the Wagnerians, Browning by 
the Browning societies. We now know that it is 
the poetry, not his febrile shrieking at a straw 
god, that makes Shelley dear to us; we know 
that in Wagner it is his music that counts, not 
his preposterous "philosophy"; in Browning his 
marvellous dramatic power and not the once 

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celebrated Browning "profundities." Nietzsche 
must take his mud bath of abuse and praise 
with the others, though he will survive it and 
emerge, not as so many others have, men of 
reputation, a mud god himself. The exegetical 
literature in Enghsh concerning him is multiply- 
ing apace, and we rejoice that it is thus far of 
excellent quahty. There are H. L. Mencken's 
admirable study, and Dr. M. A. Miigge's Niet- 
zsche and His Life and Work, a resume of all that 
Nietzsche taught and of the criticism he evoked. 
To our notion the clearest and most concise 
monograph on the subject is The Philosophy of 
Friedrich Nietzsche, by Grace Neal Dolson, 
A.B., Ph.D., formerly fellow of Cornell Univer- 
sity. Then there are Dr. Levy's work referred to 
above, the selections made by A. R. Orage; The 
Quintessence of Nietzsche, by J. M. Kennedy; 
Who Is to Be Master of the World? by A. M. 
Ludovici; On the Tracks of Life, by Leo G. Sera, 
Englished by Mr. Kennedy. But as Vasari said 
of the Farnesina Palace, "non murato ma ve- 
ramente nato" (not built but really born), so 
must the Nietzsche interpreter have a moiety of 
the Dionysian spirit coursing in his veins to do 
the poet and philosopher even slim justice. 

The attitude of the Enghsh toward the Ger- 
man thinker disconcerts Dr. Levy. If they 
would only fight him ; but to accept him as if he 
were the "latest" thing in fiction is truly British. 
They could laugh at him when Shaw served him 
up in Celtic epigram with sauce socialistic, but 
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otherwise — ! Dr. Levy makes the rafters ring 
with his sarcasm. His comparison of Benjamin 
Disraeli and Nietzsche is clever. This conti- 
nental Hebrew good-naturedly avers that it is 
now time for a little "Christian baiting" after 
the centuries of Jewish persecutions. There is a 
Heine-Hke touch in the humour of this editor. 

The introductions to Thoughts Out of Season, 
Human, All Too Human, The Birth of Tragedy, 
The Will to Power, by the various translators are 
brief and illuminating. Above all there is no 
"sugaring down," no elimination of the original 
thought, which with the Teutonic English was 
the demerit of previous English translations. For 
Adrian Collins the burden of the first essay in 
Part II of Thoughts Out of Season (the first 
chapter on The Use and Abuse of History) is 
that "with Nietzsche the historical sense became 
a malady from which men suffer, the world proc- 
ess an illusion, evolutionary theories a subtle 
excuse for inactivity. History is for the few, not 
the many. ... It has no meaning except as 
the servant of life and action, and most of us can 
only act if we forget." And turning from the 
history to the historian he condemns the "noisy 
little fellows who measure the motives of the 
great men of the past by their own and use the 
past to justify their present." 

Nietzsche's aim is "the elevation of the type 
man," a species of transcendental moral eugenics. 
For those to whom socialism is a disgust we 
recommend his The Will to Power, now for 

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the first time done into English by Anthony 
M. Ludovici. How well Mr. Ludovici has 
grasped the much abused "immoralism" may be 
found in his preface: "Nietzsche only objected 
to the influence of herd morality outside the herd; 
that is to say, among exceptional and higher men 
who may be wrecked by it. Whereas most other 
philosophers before him had been the altruists of 
the lower strata of humanity, Nietzsche may be 
aptly called the altruist of the exceptions, of the 
particular lucky cases among men " ; and how, as 
the true poet he was, the idea first came to him 
as a concrete image may be read in the account 
told by his sister Elizabeth when he conceived 
The Will to Power as the fundamental principle 
of all life. In 1870 he was serving as a volunteer 
at the seat of war in a German army ambulance 
corps. "On one occasion," she relates, "at the 
close of a very heavy day with the wounded he 
happened to enter a small town which lay on 
one of the chief military roads. He was wander- 
ing through it in a leisurely fashion when sud- 
denly, as he turned the corner of a street that 
was protected on either side by lofty stone walls, 
he heard a roaring noise, as of thunder, which 
seemed to come from the immediate neighbour- 
hood. He hurried forward a step or two, and 
what should be see but a magnificent cavalry 
regiment, gloriously expressive of the courage and 
exuberant strength of a people, ride past him 
like a luminous storm-cloud. The thimdering 
din waxed louder and louder, and lo and behold ! 

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his own beloved regiment of field artillery dashed 
forward at full speed out of the mist of motes 
and sped westward amid an uproar of clattering 
chains and galloping steeds. . . . While this pro- 
cession passed before him on its way to war and 
perhaps to death, so wonderful in its vital 
strength and formidable courage and so perfectly 
symboUc of a race that will conquer and prevail 
or perish in the attempt, Nietzsche was struck 
with the thought that the highest will to live 
coxild not find its expression in a miserable strug- 
gle for existence, a la Darwin, but in a will to 
war, a Will to Power, a will to overpower," 

Yet this philosopher of mankind militant, of 
the joy of existence, if existence is a conflict not 
a concession, this hater of facile optimism and the 
smug flatterers of the mob, could turn on his 
fellow-countrymen after the victories of 1871 and 
tell them that as a race they were hopelessly 
uncultured and uncouth. Very different from 
Richard Wagner, who insulted the French in 
the bitterness of defeat and fawned for favours 
at the German court. Altogether this new Eng- 
lish edition is treasure-trove for the students of 
Nietzsche. 

THE LAST DAYS OF VERLAINE 

One evening, when nearing the close of his 
sad and extraordinary career, Paul Verlaine said 
to some of his friends assembled at a cafe table: 
"I wish for nothing better than the existence of 

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a plain citizen in the Rue Mouffetard"; nor was 
this a vain boast made by the poet, a hater of the 
bourgeois and their habits, himself held up as an 
awful example by decent members of society. 
Verlaine was worn by dissipation, suffering from 
rheumatism, from stomach troubles. He longed 
for the quiet of home, for the care of a good 
woman. No more absinthe, no more amer picon, 
no more Httle glasses of cognac! Temperance 
and hard work were to be incorporated in his 
plans for the future, and in effect he did behave 
himself so admirably for several months that the 
cafes of the "left bank" wondered if he were 
dead or in one of his favourite hospitals. The 
Frangois-Premier, the Soleil d'Or, the Procope, 
the Escholiers, the Monome, and the Maccha- 
bees missed him, as did the bars of the Chope 
Latine and the Academic of the Rue Saint- 
Jacques; whenever the poet settled down for a 
prolonged drinking bout, disciples would gather 
and then business was sure to be brisk. The only 
news that could be gleaned of his whereabouts 
was that he was indoors, in a little apartment 
plying his pen and under the watchful eye of 
Eugenie Krantz, otherwise known at the Bal 
BulHer as Nini-Mouton because of her abundant 
blond woolly tresses. 

Not long ago at Paris the annual dinner was 
given in memory of Verlaine, and afterward the 
guests went to his monument in the Luxem- 
bourg Gardens, which was inaugurated last year. 
It is a bizarre affair by the sculptor Nieder- 
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hausern de Rodo; that it suggests an absinthe 
flask has not caused much concern among his 
admirers, for like Alfred de Musset Verlaine was 
a notable victim of the Green Fairy. But the 
project for this same monument aroused in cer- 
tain circles the most violent opposition, which 
not even the presence of men the most distin- 
guished in literature and the fine arts at the con- 
secration ceremonies could totally suppress. But 
there it stands to the memory of the modern 
Villon, to the Pauvre Leh'an, whose voice is 
sweetest and subtlest in the hoarser and more 
rhetorical choir of French poets. He was a 
loose liver, with the temperament of a spoiled 
child, a genius who never grew up. The world 
has forgiven him his vagaries, many of them 
largely a matter of pose, for the unaffected beau- 
ties of his verse. Let the heathen rage. Paul 
Verlaine will not be forgotten, even in an epoch 
that saw two such great poets as Victor Hugo and 
Charles Baudelaire. 

Messrs. F. A. Cazals and Gustave le Rouge 
have told all there is worth knowing about the 
last days of the poet in their Derniers jours de 
Verlaine. He had dragged his rheumatic leg 
and exacerbated nerves from hospital to hos- 
pital, from the Broussin to Tenon, from Saint- 
Antoine, Cochin to the Maison Dubois, Bichat, 
Saint Louis, he even had dreamed of retiring 
within the mad wards of Sainte-Anne. What 
joy, he said, to associate with simple souls who 
fancied themselves Christ, Mohammed, Na- 

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poleon! He would have liked his cards en- 
graved: ''Paul Verlaine, Madman, Asylum 
Sainte-Anne, Paris." But he confessed that he 
was only an accursed poet and such luck was not 
for him. His friend Stephane Mallarme had re- 
peatedly warned him against the abuse of ab- 
sinthe; Verlaine replied that he drank it to 
forget, not for the drink itself, that familiar fal- 
lacy of alcoholic victims. Poor Verlaine was 
ever seeking to banish the present and evoke 
the past, that disgraceful and wonderful past in 
which two poets, Rimbaud and Lelian, swam 
through golden mists of ecstasy or sank into the 
black fogs of despair. 

However, he did pull himself together for a 
time. The three vultures that fought for his 
meagre favours — his poverty was appalling — 
Eugenie Krantz, Philomene Boudin, and the 
enigmatic creature who simply called herself 
Esther, were finally resolved into one, Eugenie, 
an illiterate, good-hearted woman of the people, 
who worshipped Verlaine as a kind of incompre- 
hensible deity, yet did not refrain from giving 
him a taste of her muscular arm when he came 
home fuddled. She superstitiously saved scraps 
of paper upon which he had scribbled, believing 
that they would be worth money after his death. 
Had she not seen the pubhsher Vannier over on 
the Quai hand her good man a gold piece for a 
few lines? Poetry then had a definite value for 
this big-boned guardian of the shrine. After the 
passing of Verlaine there wasn't much to seek 
328 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

in his writing-desk. Though Eugenie Krantz 
deceived Verlaine with the utmost tranquillity, 
yet if it had not been for her he would have died 
in a hospital, a prospect that he had always 
feared. She did not long survive him. She died 
from intemperance, which she paid for by the 
sale of autographs and certain rare papers of the 
poet, among the rest a fragment of his Louis 
XVII. 

The poet must have led her a merry dance. 
He was the most irresponsible of men. A wed- 
ding, a funeral, a simple trip to church, often re- 
sulted in disappearances for days at a time. He 
had been an assiduous guest at the home of 
Mme. Nina de Callias, a young woman, talented, 
vivacious, and a patron saint of artists and liter- 
ary men. She had private means and kept open 
house for the hungry and thirsty of the tribe 
bohemian. A very interesting account of her 
may be found in The Memoirs of My Dead Life 
by George Moore, who, a lively young Irishman, 
was gadding about Paris at the time. Mme. 
Nina was separated from her husband, M. Hector 
de Callias, once a brilhant journalist, also a back- 
slider from the principles of temperance. He 
was practically unknown to her circle, and the 
astonishment was great when he turned up at 
the funeral, solemn of mien and garb. He led 
the cortege as nearest of kin, accompanied by his 
friend Verlaine. What this pair talked about 
on the long road to the cemetery, from the Ba- 
tignolles to the Pare d'Orleans, is not difficult to 

329 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

fancy; but they held themselves in good shape 
till the obsequies were ended and the little Nina 
laid in her last resting-place. Then Hector de 
Callias, his throat dry as a Ume-kiln, decamped, 
leaving to the poet Charles Cros the duty of 
doing the final hand-shaking with the mourners. 
Verlaine followed him shortly after, and on the 
return one by one the men and women who had 
been the beneficiaries of the dead Nina dropped 
from the ranks. The day was a warm one and 
cafes numerous. What that cortege numbered 
when it reached the Batignolles no one has 
told ; the entire episode reminds us of Gounod's 
humorous and sardonic Funeral March of a 
Marionette. Hector and Paul did not reappear 
in their accustomed haunts for a week. Later, 
at Fontainebleau, De Callias was put on a milk 
diet by his physician's order, and he died from 
the experiment, so they say. 

Not even this example proved a warning for 
Verlaine. He soon slipped into his old wet rut, 
and as there is an end to all things, even to a 
thirsty poet, he died January 8, 1896. He wrote 
his last poem, not inappropriately entitled Mort, 
January 5. A fever set in; during the night he 
fell out of bed and was discovered unconscious. 
A sinapism was applied. "That bites," he mur- 
mured; this was his last sentence, after that he 
merely babbled the names of friends. The state 
paid the expenses of his burial, which was the 
signal for the presence of many celebrated per- 
sons, Anatole France heading the list. Ver- 

330 



BROWSING AMONG MY BOOKS 

laine died a repentant sinner; he had always 
been that, always sinning, always repenting. His 
verse is the record in exquisite music of the con- 
tradictory nature of the man. It made him 
marvellous enemies, this nature of his. And his 
statue is in the Luxembourg Gardens to-day. 



33^ 



XI 

THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

The pathos of distance! It is a memorial 
phrase. Friedrich Nietzsche is its creator, 
Nietzsche who wrote of the drama and its origins 
in a work that is become a classic. Distance 
lends pathos, bathes in rosy enchantments the 
simplest events of a mean past; is the painter, 
in a word, who with skilful, consoKng touches 
disguises all that was sordid in our youth, all 
that once mortified or disgusted, and bridges the 
inequahty of man and man. And to our recol- 
lection of favourite actors and actresses, the sub- 
consciousness, in the dark room of which are 
stored all the old negatives of our Kfe, adds a 
glow that is positively fascinating. 

Recall, if you are a trifle grey and faded, recall 
now, after your morning coffee, Adelaide Neil- 
son. Eh, my old bucks, have I jolted sweet 
souvenirs? Was there ever such a Juliet, ever 
such a Viola, ever such a Rosalind ? Emphatic- 
ally no, our memory cells tell us. 

Yet we criticised Adelaide Neilson when she 
first appeared, criticised her Juliet, and during 
her later visits to America we criticised her Viola. 
Every one criticises. Never forget that fact. 
The only difference between your criticism and 

332 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

mine is that I am paid for mine. That doesn't 
necessarily make it better. But the statement 
is well to keep in mind. If you disagree with 
me, you are only criticising my criticism. By 
the same token I may challenge yours. Lillian 
Russell in one of her metaphysical moods — Miss 
Russell thinks profoundly at times — put the 
question in a nutshell: "After all," she remarked, 
"it is only one man's criticism." This phrase is 
magnificent in its anarchic spirit, even if it is not 
exactly original. She touched a tender spot: it 
is always one man's criticism. And no man 
thinks or feels as another. That is physiology, 
as well as psychology. When dramatic critics 
disagree, the incident should be acclaimed in- 
stead of derided. If they always agreed, then 
how quickly that stale accusation would be re- 
peated — conspiracy. 

Here is a criticism from a Philadelphia Journal 
written when Miss Neilson played Viola in 
Twelfth Night, I think, but I am not sure, in 
the season of 1876-77 (and I've forgotten who 
wrote it): 

"There was nothing about her performance 
demanding extended or minute criticism. It was 
in most respects a pleasing and amiable repre- 
sentation from a lady who has comeliness, in- 
teUigence, and famiharity with all the mechanical 
processes of her art. She was prettily dressed, 
and she contrived to express with much nicety 
the shy coyness of the maiden beneath the half- 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

hearted boldness and self-assertion of the man. 
Her posturing and gesticulation were easy and 
graceful, and her treatment of the text was 
sometimes good, but very often bad. Frequently 
the sharpest ears of her audience failed to catch 
her words, and more than once when they were 
caught there were mistakes of inflection and em- 
phasis which told of carelessness and indiffer- 
ence to study." 

Mark what follows: "The part has been taken 
as well by actresses of inferior reputation and 
less persistent claims to greatness. In one in- 
stance it was played by Mrs. John Drew in a 
manner which Miss Neilson can never hope to 
rival." 

Isn't that breath-catching, especially when 
the youngsters of to-day are told by their oldsters 
that Adelaide Neilson was the perfect incarna- 
tion of Shakespeare's Viola ? Yet here is a critic 
writing in no uncertain tone about the mediocrity 
of her impersonation. The fact that he may 
have lived to repent that criticism does not alter 
the still sterner fact of its having been written 
and published. 

Mr. William Winter speaks of Miss Neilson's 
exquisite embodiment of Viola. He wrote of 
this actress in 1877. Therefore there was no 
pathos of distance in his criticism. When I saw 
her, Eben Plympton was the Sebastian, and a 
sterling interpretation it was. Strange as it 

334 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

sounds, Mr. Plympton looked like Neilson in the 
play. Mr. Walcot, if I can remember aright, 
was the Malvolio, though perhaps not in the cast 
with Plympton. McDonough was Sir Toby, 
Howard the Sir Andrew, Hemple the Clown, Miss 
Barbour the Maria. But this must have been 
at an earlier representation. In those days I 
haunted the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, 
quite stage-mad, full of the pimply ideals of 
youth, and I do not regret it now, for I "assisted" 
at Ada Rehan's debut, John Drew's debut, the 
first appearance of his sister, clever, sparkling 
Georgie Drew Barrymore, and also the first 
appearance of Edwin Booth as Wolsey in 1876. 
I detest theatrical memoirs, books about the 
debuts of actors, and all the miscellaneous chron- 
icling of theatrical small beer, and yet I am 
thick in the tide of just such gossip. 

Mr. Winter, in his study of Twelfth Night, 
gives a list of the principal American casts. The 
only ones that interest us are those we have our- 
selves seen. In the theatre, nothing is so potent 
as^the sight. Reading of a remarkable perform- 
ance is getting Hfe at third hand, not at second. 
So 1820 does not appeal to me as much as 1877, 
when Mr. Daly revived Twelfth Night at the 
Fifth Avenue — when it was at Twenty-eighth 
Street — with Neilson as Viola and Charles 
Fisher as MalvoHo. Edward Compton, Barton 
Hill, George Clarke, and Henry E. Dixey have 
played Malvoho, and shall we ever forget Henry 
Irving? The Malvolio of Beerbohm Tree I wit- 

335 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

nessed at what was then Her Majesty's Theatre 
in 1901. Mr. Winter mentions Charles Walcot. 
He was my first Malvolio, and naturally enough 
he seemed the best. The Violas we have seen 
here were Mrs. Scott Siddons, Ellen Terry, 
Fanny Davenport, Marie Wainwright, Helena 
Modjeska, — after Neilson's, the most poetic, — 
Ada Rehan, Julia Marlowe, Viola Allen, and 
Edith Wynne Matthison. Mrs. Drew played 
Viola in her palmy days, and Mr. Winter gives 
a complete array of the old-time actresses who 
were famous in the role. Alas, such is the 
evanescent nature of the actor's art, an art writ 
in water, that these names are mere spots of 
black ink on white paper — unless one has a 
sympathetic imagination and loves to grub in 
antiquities and Shakespeariana. I do not. The 
last play of a Hauptmann or a Maeterlinck gives 
me more of a thrill than all the musty memories 
of the days that are no more, and of the dust 
on forgotten tombs. To-day is more than a mill- 
ion yesterdays or to-morrows! Let the theat- 
rical dead bury the theatrical dead! Yet here 
I am circKng about the past like a fat moth in 
a lean flame. The pathos of distance! 

But halt a moment. As you have seen, there 
were doubters in Israel even when Adelaide 
Neilson appeared, a glorious apparition from 
some hidden Arcady. As I remember, the the- 
atrical small talk of those days set her down as 
an uneducated woman who was literally drilled 

336 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

into speaking her own tongue. She looked 
Oriental: but she was English born, without a 
father's name; her mother, an obscure actress, 
was named Browne. Her father was said to have 
been Spanish, and also Jewish. Like nearly all 
the players, from David Garrick and Mrs. Sid- 
dons to Edwin Booth and Mrs. Kendal, from 
Edmund Kean to Richard Mansfield, Adelaide 
Neilson perhaps had a moiety of that Hebraic 
blood in her veins which George du Maurier 
declared a precious quintessence for an artist. 
And Neilson showed it, not alone in her royal, 
dusky beauty, but in her brilhancy of style, 
her marvellously rapid intuitive processes, her 
warmth of temperament, and the rich colour of 
her interpretations. 

How did she play Viola? As a poem in the 
living. One glance of her beautiful eyes con- 
futed a wilderness of traditions. When she 
walked we heard music. And when she spoke 
violets and roses fell from her Hps ! 

What's this? Am I, too, pressing the main- 
spring of memory? And is it only the pathos of 
distance? No, a thousand times, no! Hear the 
voice of one older than I: ''Her image, as it rises 
in memory, is not that of the actress who stormed 
the citadel of all hearts in the deHrium of JuHet, 
or dazzled with the witchery of Rosahnd's glee 
or Viola's tender grace; but it is that of the 
grave, sweet woman, who, playing softly in the 
twilight, sang — in a rich, tremulous, touching 
voice — the anthem on the man of sorrows ac- 

337 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

quainted with grief!" Thus WilHam Winter, 
who can also pour vitriol on his critical sugar 
better than any man. It shows what a hold 
Neilson the woman had on all of us in those half- 
forgotten days. 

How did she play Viola? Without a return 
to juvenile rhapsody I can answer truthfully — 
better than any other actress that I ever saw — 
Remember that this is only one man's opinion. 
She was very unequal, very capricious, and, by 
an odd contradiction, sometimes mechanical. I 
saw her once at a matinee when she tore the text 
to tatters. Being a creature of moods, she re- 
cited in a toneless voice her Hues until half the 
play was past, and then electrified us with her 
arch humour, tenderness, and intense passion. 
For the deHneation of the amorous, the dreamy, 
melting, sighing, or furnace-hot passion Neilson 
had no equal in her epoch. Her Viola was more 
various than the Violas of her contemporaries. 
Its elegiac, poetic side, was better portrayed 
by Modjeska — but Modjeska, let it be re- 
membered, had to struggle with a strange lan- 
guage; and despite the music, the most subtle 
music, — for she was a Pole and a countrywoman 
of Chopin's, — she breathed into her speech, it 
was ever a veil between her and her auditory. 

No such limitation existed in the case of Neil- 
son. Poetic she was, but poetry reaHsed; not 
the diaphanous personality of Modjeska, but a 
real flesh-and-blood woman stood before you be- 
witching your senses and appealing to your 

338 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

imagination. Her beauty, with all its palpable 
surfaces, while not exotic, as is Duse's, reached 
the imagination like a bullet surely sped to its 
mark. Perhaps it was all a mask, perhaps a 
sweet, commonplace woman peeped out at her 
audience, amused at the havoc she played with 
our hearts and heads. I have heard this said; 
but I prefer to cherish the illusion, for beautiful 
illusions are the only reality in a world of ugly 
dreams. Neilson, starry-eyed Adelaide, we still 
salute your memory! For our generation you 
are the first Viola, let the others do what they 
will. Alas, is it the pathos of distance? 

And the others ! A superb group ! Ellen Terry 
of yesterday, fehcitous, abounding in sweet mad- 
cap merriment, her melancholy but skin-deep, 
her love, the joy of life personified. Mrs. Scott 
Siddons, grave and imperial in her beauty, 
read Viola. I never saw her on the boards in 
this character. Marie Wainwright and Fanny 
Davenport were Violas satisfactory of schooling. 
Miss Rehan, brilHant and abounding in vitality, 
did not sound, or did not care to sound, the 
deeper organ tones of the disguised Cesario. 
Hers was an assumption that I cared less for 
than her Rosalind. Its key-note was brilliancy, 
wit, and aristocratic distinction; above all, per- 
sonal distinction. 

JuHa Marlowe's Viola is conceived and played 
more naturally than others I remember. Few 
actresses would dare discard the obvious readings 
and theatrical devices as does Miss Marlowe. 

339 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

But if she is natural she has much to thank 
nature for — personal charm, a comely figure 
and sweet face, and a voice the richest on 
the English-speaking stage. And brains in 
abundance direct this unique ensemble of at- 
tractions. No one reads blank verse with the 
simplicity and art of Miss Marlowe. Her con- 
ception of the role compels by its subtle com- 
minglement of grace and poetry. Some of her 
speeches are tear-moving; her assumption of 
boyish youth never disillusions. O rare JuUa 
Marlowe ! 

And, at last, we reach, after a fatiguing and 
elliptical route, Edith Wynne Matthison and her 
Viola. Again let me disclaim, at the risk of pro- 
testing too much, that my opinion has no finality. 
Only fools are consistent, says Emerson ; and the 
Jove of Weimar, Goethe, remarked that only 
fools are modest. So I hope I shall be accused of 
neither consistency nor modesty when I wonder 
audibly why Miss Matthison has not made more 
of a stir in the dramatic world. She has that 
rarest of gifts, personality. And yet her Viola 
did not intrigue me as vastly as I had expected. 
I still adhere to my first opinion, and will con- 
tinue to do so until this charming actress plays 
the part in a different key. She is too sombre, 
she lacks in buoyancy, lacks in mood versatiHty 
— and what is Viola if not buoyant, replete with 
fleeting moods, a creature of fire and air, caprice, 
sunshine, and fantasy? 

340 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

Miss Matthison, thanks to the funereal atmos- 
phere of the Elizabethan setting, plays within a 
narrow octave of Viola's moods. She gives us 
all of her melancholy music, her veiled ardour, 
her seK-effacement. Her horizon brightens in 
the scenes with Olivia. She essays comedy with 
a delicate touch. Melancholy, not vaporous as 
is Orsino's, but pessimistic and modern in its 
essence, is what I feel as the foundation of Miss 
Matthison's reading. That she is the greatest 
Viola since Neilson's I dare not say. She is not 
so poetic as Modjeska; not so audaciously 
masterful as Rehan. She is unique in her inter- 
pretation, inasmuch as it presents us with a 
Viola all gracious in her sadness, Viola abso- 
lutely in the mode minor. 

With that canorous voice, its triste and dying 
fall, the many cadences of her speech, the pensive 
beauty of brow and sweet mobile mouth. Miss 
Matthison ought to go far — not as far as Neil- 
son, not so poetically high as Modjeska, yet far. 
I did not detect evidence of a supreme imagina- 
tion, but I have only seen her twice on the boards. 
She seems to have more fancy than imagination. 
We miss the big, sweeping draught of a command- 
ing personaHty. She is persuasive, not compel- 
ling. And that is one of her charms — that same 
insinuating personality. For the rest, I can only 
aver that her hands are beautiful hands, not so 
pregnant with meaning as Duse's, not so poetic 
as the pianist Essipoff's, but physically beauti- 
ful. Her features are firmly modelled, interest- 

341 



THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE 

ing in their irregularity and effective in profile. 
With Miss Matthison it is more than — item: 
A pair of lips, or eyes, or hands; it is the gen- 
erous and rich nature which shines through her 
eyes, is manifest in her melodic speech. But 
a great Viola — no ! Again, you will say, the 
pathos of distance! 



342 



XII 
IN PRAISE OF FIREWORKS 

The art of the fireworker is pre-eminently 
suited to summer climes; in the hyperborean 
regions nature saves man the bother of inventing 
pyrotechnics, as all know who have witnessed the 
glory of northern skies at night; but wherever 
are lands that boast warm evenings there may be 
seen fantastic-coloured fires aloft and admiring 
crowds below. Considering the antiquity of this 
art, which was practised thousands of years ago 
in China, it has not progressed with its sister 
arts. 

Architecture has come to a flowering and a 
decay in many countries; sculpture from Phidias 
to Rodin has met with many victories and many 
vicissitudes. But since the Greeks has there 
been great sculpture? Literature, like the poor, 
we shall always have with us — that is some 
sort, if not distinguished or original. Painting, 
according to criticism, reached its apogee with 
the Italians of the Renaissance, and in Spain with 
Velasquez. Remains music — for we need not 
include just now the entire seven arts. PhiHp 
Hale has said that since Beethoven music has 
made no distinct advance; permutations almost 
innumerable there have been, but original utter- 

343 



IN PRAISE OF FIREWORKS 

ance there has been little. Men of genius, such 
as Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, Liszt, 
have each contributed something to the mighty 
cairn of music; however, despite their strong 
individuahty, they, like modern painters, have 
only developed certain sides of their art. Crea- 
tors in the sense that Beethoven was a creator 
they are not. Richard Wagner, less original in 
melodic gifts, was, thanks to a more potent per- 
sonality, more successful in erecting a formal 
edifice, which, combining — so he believed — all 
the arts in one huge synthesis, he named the 
music-drama. 

Now, in his general scenic scheme light plays 
an important role. We need not remind opera- 
goers of the gorgeous effects he introduces into 
the Ring; the dull golden haze of the Rhinegold 
in the first act, the infernal smithy of the Nibe- 
lung gnomes or the rainbow apotheosis at the 
close. Die Walkiire, too, is rich in fiery incan- 
tations, the mystic Hght on the hero's sword, the 
moonlight, the electric storm in which Siegmund 
and Hunding battle, or the forge episode in Sieg- 
fried; even flame is vomited from the dragon's 
mouth, young Siegfried defeats his grandfather 
Wotan amid fire, and fire-begirt he finds a bride. 
In fire and smoke at the end of Gotterdam- 
merung the abode of the gods goes up. Yet the 
most striking of all the fire tableaux of Wagner 
is the finale of Die Walkiire, with Wotan singing 
to the crisping and crackling of his conjured and 
sentinel flames. It is a stirring invocation to 

344 



IN PRAISE OF FIREWORKS 

Loki, the fire god, and a magnificent stage pic- 
ture. 

But all this is an art of the foot-lights; it 
is cribbed, cabined, and confined between a few 
walls. The genuine art of pyrotechny must 
have as a background the sky; for a frame the 
walls of heaven. Its chief merit lies in its in- 
ability to express ideas, above all, didactic ideas. 
It must not tell a story, insinuate a moral, or 
imitate any earthly form. It is the ideal art of 
the arabesque. Attempts at portraiture of pop- 
ular men, poKticians and other unimportant 
persons, are simple burlesques, unworthy of the 
serious-minded fireworker. His patterns must 
be varied, his tintings multifarious. He must 
have the courage of his fiery fugues, and the con- 
viction that if all other arts are moribund, his is 
still vital and capable of an infinite evolution. 
In a word, the pyrotechnist should have the eye 
of a painter, the imagination of a poet, the de- 
signing brain of an architect, and the soul of 
a fanatic. 

With his soundless traceries, muted music of 
fire, he may stand upon the threshold of a uni- 
versal art, one that will need no preliminary 
initiations, one immediately understanded of the 
people. While the sky must not be his pulpit, 
he may nevertheless inculcate a love of beauty 
with his multicoloured aerial panoramas. Form 
and hue, pattern and emotional meanings, may 
all enter into his incandescent compositions. 
Professor Pain, virtuoso in the art, delights in 

345 



IN PRAISE OF FIREWORKS 

showing us historic happenings in a coruscating 
pragmatic blaze; yet we beheve if left to follow 
his own devices this firesmith would give the 
world a nobler style of art. And how restful is 
this art even in its undeveloped state. The eye 
is gratified without tiring the brain; there are no 
plots, no dramas of problems; no rude orchestra 
or vocal bowlings assault the ear with modern 
clangours. You simply sit back and let the pro- 
fessor wend his squibby way, and then you go 
home to iridescent dreams. 

I do not exaggerate when as a regenerating 
influence I consider pyrotechny far above the 
teachings of Ibsen, William James, Tolstoy, and 
Richard Strauss — who should have been a fire- 
worker instead of a musical composer. 



346 



XIII 
A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 



Pragmatism is in the air. The magazines give 
the new movement a prominent place. It is 
discussed on mountain and at the sea-shore as if 
it were some portentous event like the arrival 
within our atmosphere of a threatening comet 
or the advent of a freshly hatched religion. Per- 
haps some day it may become a reUgion. The 
attractive lectures of that extraordinary Profes- 
sor William James, the growing interest in the 
writings of Nietzsche, the books of Dewey and 
Schiller — particularly the latter thinker's Hu- 
manism — all point to states of f eeHng on the part 
of our reading public which betoken something 
of genuine import. And it is true that prag- 
matism offers to the speculative mind plenty of 
problems. Its ugly title, with its connotations 
of self-conceit, meddlesomeness, and bumptious- 
ness, is misleading. Professor James wittily 
calls it an old thing with a new name ; in a phrase, 
old wine in new bottles. But your true prag- 
matist is the reverse of the dictionary definition. 
He is as indifferent as the ocean in his views of 
the universe; a latitudinarian, compared with 
whom that rapidly vanishing individual the ag- 

347 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

nostic is a mugwump. The agnostic hopelessly 
dropped his hands before the riddles of Hfe, but 
the pragmatist does not indulge in such a useless 
gesture. Like Peer Gynt, he "goes round 
about"; evades the real hard-and-fast issues. 
He knows his theory to be good waiting-ground, 
and from it he procrastinatingly surveys the 
cosmos with gentle curiosity. He is nothing if 
not tolerant, all things to all men and all faiths. 
He is too sweet to be true. It tickles the 
vanity of the man of the multitude who thus 
believes that he can think without thinking. 
A short cut to Parnassus, philosophy made 
easy. To the anxious interrogator of spiritual 
uncertainties he says: ''Wait! We are on 
the wide stream of consciousness. What may 
now seem to you inexplicable may be clear when 
we drift further down." They do drift. The 
landscape on either bank of the river changes 
continually. See, says the pragmatist, such is 
truth. A chameleon, ever changing. My truth 
may not be your truth. As there are so many 
humans on the globe, so are there as many 
Truths. Comforted, the anxious one may go 
on dry land to rob, kill, or outrage if his con- 
science says him yea. But he is then an ex- 
treme case. He has criminal instincts. With 
such rude souls Professor James does not deal. 
Why should he? But — it may be pragmatism 
in the end. 

"The true, to put it very briefly," James says 
in his first lecture, "is only the expedient in our 

348 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

way of thinking, just as the right is only the 
expedient in the way of our behaving." That 
is, a truth is justified if its consequences are 
useful to you. In a certain sense we may be 
pragmatists, just as M. Jourdain spoke prose for 
a long time without knowing it. The novelty of 
the idea dates back to the hills, before Protag- 
oras had discovered that man is the measure of 
all things. Professor James mentions Aristotle 
as an early pragmatist, but does not speak of 
Thomas Aquinas, though the angelical doctor 
''humanised" Aristotle for the Christian world. 
Terence has been pressed into service with his 
"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto." 
Wasn't St. Paul pragmatic when he spoke of 
faith and good works? Pragmatic is to be prac- 
tical — its Greek root so signifies. How about 
Goethe and his question: "What is the value of 
this to me now?" Pure pragmatism. And Re- 
nan with his Pyrrhonism, and his theory of a 
world ever in the process of creation, or re- 
creation — fieri is his precise word. And our 
egoistic friend Max Stirner, an extreme Hegelian, 
whose motto is "My truth is the truth." Are. 
not all political opportunists pragmatists? Pope 
Pius X was a pragmatist when he denounced 
"Modernism," and James would be the first to 
acknowledge him as such, for modern thought, 
modern science, are repugnant to the Holy 
Father; they are not "practical" truths for 
him — knowing as he does the ever-changing 
"truths" of science (compare, for example, the 

349 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINE? 

evolution of Lamarck and Darwin with the evo- 
lutionary theories, the Transformism of Quinton, 
to-day). Professor James declares that God is 
not a "gentleman." Villiers de ITsle Adam 
proves him a pragmatist in his ironical Tribulat 
Bonhomet. God asks of Bonhomet: "Quand 
jetterez-vous le masque?" "Mais apres vous, 
Seigneur!" responds Bonhomet. 

Pragmatism, then, while no new thing, is 
nevertheless propounded as a theory of truth. 
Truth means agreement with reaHty, and all 
truths must be valued for their practical conse- 
quences. Nature abhors an absolute. There is 
no absolute in knowledge or belief. If a man 
says that he is hot he is hot for himself though 
the thermometer be at zero. In effect Professor 
James would deny the absolute of the thermom- 
eter, not the validity of the man's assertion that 
he is hot. All ideahsm, all rationalism, all ideas 
based on an absolute, on the infinite, are Hke the 
thermometer, i. e., they are relative, though they 
may do you a lot of good. A Turk, a Hebrew, 
an atheist, a Christian, may be sound Pragma- 
tists. Indeed, there is nothing so hospitable as 
pragmatism — which, according to its professors, 
is not a philosophy but only a working theory, an 
attitude of utility, a method, rather than a 
system; a species of sophistical picklock that is 
to open up all the metaphysical banks and re- 
veal their bankruptcy. James speaks wittily 
of Kant "as the rarest and most complicated 
of all the bric-a-brac museums" — that Kant, 

3SO 



cA PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

who is the greatest moral nihilist among mod- 
ern thinkers, a denier compared to whom Max 
S timer is a bubbling well-spring of affirmations. 

But man has been called a metaphysical 
animal. The artistic spider that spins in the 
dark cells of every thinker's brain is already at 
work with the pragmatic idea. Its originator, 
Professor Charles Sanders Peirce (in 1877 and 
1878 he first spread the good tidings), confesses 
that his child got away from him, so he renamed 
it Pragmaticism. Schiller, a disciple of James, 
calls his variation on the theme Humanism — 
also a very old title and something quite differ- 
ent once upon a time. 

Other days, other ways. New manners, new 
modalities. Professors James and Dewey are 
the American upholders of this boiling down of 
Locke, Mill, Hume, Bain; in Germany such 
names as Mach, Hertz, Ostwald, are enlisted, 
and in Italy Papini, Prezolini, and Calderoni 
have started a review — at Florence — called 
Leonardo, devoted to the extension of the idea of 
Pragmatism — which is really not "Pragma- 
tism" but a congeries of pragmatic ideas and 
theories. In France it is the "Philosophy of 
action" and has attracted a number of bold 
spirits. The entire movement is greatly influ- 
enced by Nietzsche. Nor need we be surprised 
if from this humble if arid acorn some amazing 
trees will grow. You may expel metaphysics by 
way of the door, yet it will enter through the win- 
dow or come down the chimney. To be quite 

351 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHH^ISTINES 

frank, pragmatism is old-fashioned utilitarianism 
with a dollar mark. It has much of the canny 
Yankee in its ingenious mechanism. And later 
it may develop into a rule of conduct, for it 
aims at dealing with the concrete, at giving 
metaphysical "truths" a new content, at throw- 
ing overboard the entire apparatiis of meta- 
physics from Kant to Schopenhauer. Again we 
beg leave to doubt the possibiHty of these things 
occurring, and James would probably tell us: 
You are quite right. Make your own truths in 
this very plastic world around you, which is 
real, as it is your own creation. If not prag- 
matism, then something else practical. 

Upon the beach of Hfe lie glistening in the 
sun innumerable gigantic wrecks and shards of 
philosophical systems, washed up by the tides 
of thought only to be swallowed in the tomb of 
time. The pragmatists point to these antique 
remains, once vital, now obsolete, and exclaim: 
"Behold, to this state must come all truths!" 
Ibsen expressed the same idea when he said that 
a truth usually ages after its twentieth year. 
But pragmatism, not being a system, only a rov- 
ing comet amid the constellations of philoso- 
phers, will, it is asserted, remain eternally young 
— ■ that is, if some giant planet does not drag it 
within its orbit and incorporate it as a part — 
a very small part — of its own system. 

In sooth, as it stands now in its nudity there 
is not much to grasp. It is a thin doctoral thesis. 
The nature of judgments, most important of 

352 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

propositions, is not dealt with by James. Or, 
to put it thus : deny the perfections of the judg- 
ment, and , a priori, you impugn the truth of the 
system. Deny the truth of the system, and, a 
posteriori, you infer the weakness of the judg- 
ment. Yet the consequences of judgment are 
seen in conduct. Pragmatism is not a theory of ^ 
truth but a theory of what it is expedient 
to believe. No "categorical imperatives" for 
James, only expediency — you remember his 
major definition: "The true is only the ex- 
pedient in the way of our thinking." Thus 
the nature of belief is never touched, and judg- 
ment, "the real problem of truth," is left in the 
dark, maintains Mr. Ralph Hawtrey. Professor 
James calls the rationalists "tender-minded" 
and the pragmatists "tough-minded," i. e., they 
do not fear to face reality. It strikes us that 
the above crux and the failure of the pragmatists 
to come to grips with it prove the new men 
"tender," not "tough," minded. A truth that 
is only good as a means and not in itself sets us 
to wondering what particular kind of falsehood 
this "truth" must be. It is putting the cart 
before the horse. Life, if lived only for what 
we get out of it, would not be Hved out by 
many men. Bread we can't do without; but 
only to have bread — — ^? We suspect pragma- 
tism to be labouring in the mesh of muddled 
verbal definitions. 

It calls itself empirical and nominalistic, as 
opposed to the ancient realism and the new 

353 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

rationalism. Despite protestations to the con- 
trary, there is to be detected upon the "new 
truth" the deadly trail of eclecticism, and when 
the pragmatic palace is built — and it is sure to 
be — we may see many old bricks from many old 
systems used in its construction. The pragma- 
tist is neither a yes-sayer nor a no-sayer to the 
universe. He is a looker-on, despite his claims to 
be a worker with viable ideas. His is a critical, 
not a constructive, attitude. If the centuries pre- 
ceding him had maintained this pose of indiffer- 
ence what intellectual values would have been 
transmitted us? To be a cheerful sceptic is much 
easier than to forge the thunderbolts of affirma- 
tion or negation. Moreover, the old ideas, even 
if "abstract," "obsolete," mere empty frames 
without "concrete" pictures, were, after all, defi- 
nite ideas and have served pragmatic purposes. 
What would have become of our thinking ap- 
paratus if back in the womb of Time some genius 
had not formulated the notions of Time and 
Space? Working hypotheses, if not realities. 
Better the bitter thunder of Schopenhauer's pes- 
simism than this limp, waiting-for-something- 
to-be-proved attitude. Dynamic? The quality 
that pragmatism does not possess is the dynamic 
element. William James is a dynamic writer, as 
is the fantastic Papini — who is more poet than 
pragmatist — but, between a man and a working 
system of conduct, gulfs may intervene. For the 
young pragmatism will always mean: "Nothing 
is proved, all is permitted." And though Pro- 

354 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

fessor James admits a belief in God as a working 
h}^othesis this hypothesis would not long work 
in a world where virtue is judged only by its 
consequences — pleasant or unpleasant to each 
of us, as the case may be. Pascal saw these 
things clearly when he told the incredulous man 
that it didn't matter much to the sceptic whether 
there was a God or annihilation after death, as 
the two doctrines were equally indifferent to him; 
what mattered very much, however, were the 
different consequences of the two doctrines. We 
suppose for this speech Pascal will be called a 
pragmatist. So are we in this case, for by their 
consequences we shall judge the "truths" of the 
pragmatists, whether "truths" objective or 
"truths" newly manufactured for special oc- 
casions. 

Curious it is to see bobbing up again that once 
fiercely hated word "expediency," with its in- 
evitable corollary: The end justifies the means. 
Has the Society of Jesus captured the pragma- 
tists? will be asked by the timid. Yet here is that 
same terror-breeding axiom, so sedulously foisted 
upon the Jesuits for years, emerging from ob- 
scurity and actually used as a catchword em- 
broidered upon the banners of the pragmatists. 
Expediency! The end justifies the means! Is 
Truth (capitalised) a chameleon — or a phoenix? 
Professor James in one of his lectures on The 
Notion of Truth assured us that, "first, you 
know, a new theory is attacked as absurd ; then 
it is admitted to be true but obvious and sig- 

355 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

nificant; finally it is seen to be so important that 
its adversaries claim that they themselves dis- 
covered it." We plead guilty to the second count, 
omitting the word "significant." Obvious is this 
pragmatism with its "cash values," its vast 
Gradgrindlike appetite for "facts," "reality," 
and its sophistical "meliorism." Its "reahties" 
are those of the midriflf, not of the imagination. 
It is all very well to leave the soul — or what is 
called the "soul" — out of a working scheme of 
life; but if religion is " the poetry of the poor" it 
may be also the "reality" of the rich — that is, 
the rich in imagination and feeling. There are 
large claims made for the "humanity" of prag- 
matism; indeed, James includes within its do- 
main all earth and heaven and hell. It wel- 
comes with open arms "the will to believe," the 
religious spirit. But what special call is there 
to tell those who seek the truth that it doesn't 
much matter for practical purposes what the 
truth is? Here is your invertebrate attitude, 
notwithstanding the talk of "reality." We know 
that as far as results are concerned one phi- 
losophy is as good as another. To say "philos- 
ophy" is only to sum up in a fatidical phrase 
the physiologic states of the particular philos- 
opher; or, as M. Louis Thomas wittily puts it, 
" the hazards of my digestions." After all, Plato 
was platonic and Schopenhauer the first Scho- 
penhauerian. And, judging from The Isle of 
Penguins, M. France is a GulHver who has read 
Anatole France, and, perhaps, H. G. Wells. 

3S6 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

Pragmatism is just one more exemplar of meta- 
physical virtuosity in a world already over- 
burdened with metaphysics and the common 
plague of mental gymnastic. From pragmatism 
we turn with rehef even to TertulKan and repeat 
after him: " Certum est quia impossibile est." 

II 

JACOBEAN ADVENTURES 

Almost every great philosopher has been an- 
noyed by his devil. Of this history has assured 
us. Each according to his temperament has 
come to grips with his household demon. If 
Satan once in satanic exuberance threw a stone 
at the head of St. Dominic, did not Luther 
fling an inkstand at the dark-skinned gentle- 
man, thereby wasting his temper, good ink, and 
all to no decorative purpose, though the spot on 
the wall is still shown to pilgrims? The particular 
form of devil that entered the atelier of Cuvier 
was of the famihar bovine type. When the 
naturalist asked him what he wanted, "I've 
come to swallow you," was the amiable reply. 
" Oh, no, you haven't. You wear horns and hoofs. 
You are granivorous, not carnivorous." The 
evil one departed, foiled by a scientific fact. 
Now students of demonology know that Satan 
Mekatrig may appear disguised as a maleficent 
idea. The latter part of his life Ernest Renan de- 
spised a devil he described as "the mania of cer- 

357 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

titude." He dearly loved a concept that couldn't 
conceive. Nature abhors an absolute, and for 
Renan the world process was fieri, a becoming, a 
perpetual re-creation. Professor William James 
has his own devil, a haunting devil, which he has 
neither named nor summoned, but that sits by 
his bedside or with him at his study desk. This 
bright special devil is Monism, and to exorcise 
it, to banish it without bell or candle but with 
book, he published his Hibbert Lectures, de- 
livered at Manchester College, on the present 
situation of philosophy. The book bears the 
pleasing title A PluraUstic Universe. It is the 
record of his adventures among the masterpieces 
of metaphysics; and what an iconoclastic cruise 
it has been for him! 

When pragmatism was discussed Mr. Hawtrey 
criticised the doctrine — or attitude, or whatever 
jelly-hke form it may assume — thus: The nature 
of judgments, most important of propositions, 
is not dealt with by Professor James. Yet the 
consequences of judgment are seen in conduct. 
Pragmatism is not a theory of truth, but a theory 
of what it is expedient to beheve. "Precisely 
so," Mr. James could have retorted; "if it is 
expedient for you not to believe in pragmatism 
as a working system, then don't attempt to do 
so." This advice would have been a perfectly 
enunciated expression of pragmatism. We con- 
fess we do not find him any the less pragmatist 
in his new volume, as some critics have as- 
serted. He is more protean than ever; but then 

358 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

the essence of pragmatism is to be protean. 
When you attempt to recall the colour of the 
mind of William James you are forced to think 
of a chameleon. Running fire, he slips through 
your fingers, benignly scorching them. The 
entire temper of A Pluralistic Universe is critic- 
ally warlike. He invades the enemy's country. 
Armed with the club of pluralism, he attacks the 
bastions of monism, rationalism, and intellect- 
uaHsm. For the seasoned theologian, says a 
Roman Catholic theologian, the spectacle must 
be exhilarating. That old ice-church, the strong- 
hold of rationalism, has long been an objective 
for ecclesiastical hot shot. To see a philosopher 
of the James eminence shooting the latest-fan- 
gled scientific projectiles at the common enemy 
must provoke the query Quo vadis? What next? 
Wohin? That Mr. James employs for hostile 
purposes the concepts of rationalism Mr. Paul 
Elmer More has remarked; but the philoso- 
pher had forestalled this objection in his note to 
Lecture Six. Speaking of Bergson, he asks: 
"Does the author not reason by concepts ex- 
clusively in his very attempt to show that they 
can give no insight?" He answers: "What he 
reaches by their means is thus only a new prac- 
tical attitude." Chi non istima, vien siimato! we 
might add. 

Let us broach the Jacobean arguments, with 
one intercalation. The enormous power of vis- 
ualising a fact, thanks to the author's intel- 
lect and literary style, makes of A Pluralistic 

359 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

World ambrosia for the happy many. Without 
doubt, beginning with Schopenhauer and down 
to Nietzsche and James, there has been an at- 
tempt to batter the musty walls of metaphysical 
verbiage. Such clarity of speech, such simple 
ways of putting subtle ideas as Mr. James's are 
rare among German or English thinkers. The 
French have hitherto enjoyed the monopoly in 
this respect. Indeed, so deft is the verbal vir- 
tuosity of James that his very clearness is often 
deluding and might become for a man of less 
sincerity a temptation to indulge in sophistry; 
but this, we feel assured, is not so. Whatever 
essential weaknesses there are in the ideas pre- 
sented by our philosopher they are at least pre- 
sented with the ringing tones of conviction. Or 
can a man be sincere and a sophist at the same 
time? 

The form of idealistic thinking that postulates 
an absolute came into EngKsh philosophy by 
way of Germany. "The Rhine has flowed into 
the Thames," said Professor Henry Jones; "the 
stream of Germanic idealism has been diffused 
over the academical world of Great Britain. 
The disaster is universal." Ferrier, J. H. Stir- 
ling, and J. H. Green are to be thanked for this. 
James thus defines the difference between em- 
piricism and rationalism: "Reduced to their 
most pregnant difference, empiricism means the 
habit of explaining wholes by parts, and ration- 
ahsm means the habit of explaining parts by 
wholes. Rationahsm thus preserves affinities 
360 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

with monism, since wholeness goes with union, 
while empiricism inchnes to pluraUstic views. 
No philosophy can ever be anything but a sum- 
mary sketch, a picture of the world in abridg- 
ment, a foreshortened bird's-eye view of the per- 
spective of events; and the first thing to notice 
is this, that the only material we have at our dis- 
posal for making a picture of the whole world 
is supplied by the various portions of that world 
of which we have already had experience. We 
can invent no new forms of conception applica- 
ble to the whole exclusively and not suggested 
originally by the parts. . . . Let me repeat once 
more that a man's vision is the great fact about 
him (without vision the people perish). Who 
cares for Carlyle's reasons, or Schopenhauer's or 
Spencer's? A philosophy is the expression of a 
man's intimate character, and all definitions of 
the universe are but the deliberately adopted 
reactions of human characters upon it." James 
deliberately renounces the metaphysical ap- 
paratus and casts logic to the dogs. He must 
of necessity approve of Jowett's ''Logic is neither 
an art nor a science, but a dodge," quoted by 
Leslie Stephen; but when logic goes out at the 
door, doesn't faith come in through the window? 
With the duaHstic theism of Christianity he 
does not concern himself. "Theological ma- 
chinery" is not within the scope of these lectures. 
To demolish the monistic form of pantheism, 
that pantheism developed by Spinoza, which en- 
visages God as One, as the Absolute, is the de- 
361 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

light of our thinker. In reality we are all prag- 
matists, all pluralists without knowing it until 
now. On the stage of this theatre of ideas the 
Cambridge master manipulates the concept pup- 
pets, the ^^ All-form'" and the ^^ Each-form,^^ and 
the duel is in this dramatist's hands very ex- 
citing. It is not merely a battle of conjunctions, 
of the qua and quatenus, the "as" and the "as 
such"; but a wholesale massacre of "ideas," 
Platonic and their congeners. It is a cheerful 
spectacle to witness an intellectual descendant 
of Kant, that grand old nihilist of Konigsberg, 
blow skyward with his pluralistic dynamite the 
lofty structure which once housed the "Ding an 
sick," and those fat, toddling Categorical Im- 
peratives. Professor James is the one philo- 
sophic showman of his day who gives you the 
worth of your money. 

He does not believe in an objective Truth 
with a capital — there are also the "lower case" 
truths to be taken into consideration. While he 
hints not at having heard Ibsen's statement that 
all truths sicken and die about every twenty 
years, it is not difficult to conjure our chief prag- 
matist as chuckling over the notion. Pyrrho 
was philosophically begot by Anaxarchus, and 
Pyrrho in turn begat pyrrhonism, which begat 
the modern brood of intellectual deniers, Kant 
and Hegel at their head. In so far as relates 
to monism, Professor James is as profound a 
doubter as Pyrrho. He would gladly extirpate 
the roots of this system, which builds from above 
362 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

downward. In a suggestive study, L'Absolu, by 
L. Dugas of Paris, the absolute is studied as a 
pathologic variation of sentiment. "L'absolu- 
tisme, sous toutes ses formes, implique contra- 
diction; il vise un but et en atteint un autre," 
asserts the French thinker. 

"The pluralistic world," continues James, "is 
thus more Kke a federal repubhc than like an 
empire or a kingdom." Monism, on the other 
hand, believes in the block universe, in a time- 
less, changeless condition; "all things interpene- 
trate and telescope together in the great total 
conflux." Philosophy, which is a kind of phoenix 
in its power of emerging from its own ashes, al- 
ways reflects the Time Spirit. Formerly abso- 
lute and monarchical, it is now democratic, even 
socialistic. Pluralism appeals to Socialists. 
Only a few years ago J. H. Rosny the elder, the 
novelist and social philosopher, wrote a book 
called Le Pluralisme, the first chapter of which, 
Continuity and Change, appeared in La Re- 
vue du Mois. Pluralism and pragmatism have 
been in the air since Ernest Mach and Richard 
Avenarius pubUshed their important treatises. 
Francis Herbert Bradley of Oxford, with his Ap- 
pearance and Reality, is the man upon whom 
James trains his heaviest artillery. Josiah Royce 
is handled in A Pluralistic Universe more gently 
than in Pragmatism. We still hear of the " tough- 
minded" and the "tender-minded," and while 
transcendentalism (oh, souvenir of Massachu- 
setts!) is pronounced "thin," plurahsm is de- 

3^3 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

scribed as "thick." As much as he dares Pro- 
fessor James avoids the conceptual jargon of the 
schools. His analogies, which are legion, are 
formed from the clay of every-day imagery. The 
immanence of god in the universe (lower case 
god) he admits, but pronounces that god finite, 
not an All-form. Monism is "steep and brit- 
tle" — this for the benefit of Oxford. He has 
named his empiricism Radical Empiricism to dis- 
tinguish it from the antique atomistic form. 
After that wonderful book, The Varieties of Re- 
ligious Experience, we are not surprised to hear 
Mr. James discussing the phenomenon of psy- 
chic research — "I myself firmly believe that 
most of these phenomena are rooted in reality." 

The truth is that titles such as Monism, Ideal- 
ism, and Pragmatism belong to the category of 
Lewis Carroll's portmanteau words, words into 
which can be packed many meanings. Mr. More 
has acutely pointed out that "in denouncing 
Platonism as the type and source of rationahstic 
metaphysics he [James] had in mind not the 
Greek Plato but a Plato viewed through Teu- 
tonic spectacles." This is well put. The world 
of thought is not yet through with Plato, Mr. 
James naturally included. The terrain of men- 
tal vision would be terribly narrowed without the 
Greek. 

Two interesting chapters are devoted, one to 
Fechner and his animism, the other to Henri 
Bergson, that French philosopher who has at- 
tacked the very ramparts of intellectualism. 

364 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHILISTINES 

Read the paragraphs in which are set forth the 
impotence of intellectualistic logic to define a 
universe where change is continuous and what 
really exists is not things made, but things in the 
making : Renan and his fieri again newly instru- 
mented by a brilHant Berlioz of philosophy; also 
Herachtus with his fire and flux. While Pro- 
fessor James deprecates the tendency among the 
younger men to depreciate the originality of our 
latter-day philosophies, there is no gainsaying 
the fact that the massive wheel of the World Idea 
revolves and the systems of yesterday become 
the systems of to-morrow. Perhaps this is the 
real Eternal Recurrence of Nietzsche — that 
Nietzsche who has been the greatest dissolvent 
in German philosophic values since Kant. 

Let us be grateful to the memory of the late 
William James for his large, lucid, friendly book; 
for his brave endeavour to establish the continu- 
ity of experience. He has worked to humanise 
rationalism, to thaw the frozen concept absolute. 
If he had cared to he might have described mo- 
nism as an orchestra with a violin solo performer, 
making its many members subordinate to the 
All-form; while the pluralistic orchestra, each 
and every musician playing in harmony, would 
typify the Each-form. Yet despite his sympathy 
with " pan-psychism " and certain manifestations 
of ''superhuman consciousness," no new Barbey 
d'Aurevilly would have ever dared to advise 
WiUiam James — as the old French one did 
Baudelaire and later Huysmans — either to 

365 



A PHILOSOPHY FOR PHH^ISTINES 

blow out his brains or sink at the foot of the 
Cross and worship. Faith being the Fourth 
Dimension of the human intellect, the Cam- 
bridge professor dismisses it under the rubric 
of "Over-belief. " Yet mysticism mightily rages 
down Boston way. 



366 



XIV 

THE PLAYBOY OF WESTERN 
PHILOSOPHY 



Robert Louis Stevenson in an essay on style, 
charming notwithstanding its discussion of tech- 
nical elements, describes a conjuror juggling first 
with two, then three, finally four oranges, keep- 
ing them all aloft with seemingly small eJBfort. 
Stevenson employed this image to explain cer- 
tain qualities of literature. After rereading the 
books of Henri Bergson, in the admirable Eng- 
lish translation, I couldn't help thinking of the 
conjuror spinning his four oranges in mid-air, so 
deftly does the French philosopher keep in mo- 
tion his images, with a leitmotiv which he has 
named the elan vital, the vital impulse. It is 
no mere coincidence that in every successful phi- 
losophy there may be found a boldly coined image 
which serves not only to stamp the entire system, 
but also as a handy catchword for its disciples. 
We know that there is much more in Kant than 
his Ding an Sich, the famous Thing-in-itself ; yet 
shorn of that phrase the Kantian forces would no 
longer be as terrible as an army with banners. 
Hegel, that old cloud-compeller, the Jupiter Plu- 

367 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

vius of metaphysics, for what would he stand 
if not for his Absolute and his theory of Nega- 
tives; yet they are not altogether Hegelianism. 
And Schopenhauer, whose Will-to-Live image 
brought his philosophy safely into port through 
a muddy sea of pessimism; or Comte and his 
Positivism, the scepticism of Renan, the agnos- 
ticism of Spencer, or the foggy Unconscious of 
the Berlin thinker, Hartmann — each of these 
schemes for a new Weltanschauung has as a sign, 
a symbol, an oriflamme, an image that sticks 
to the memory long after the main lines of the 
various philosophical ideas are forgotten. A 
philosopher is often doubled by a poet as an 
image-maker. And many sport Siegfried's magic 
Tarnhelm, that not only makes them quite in- 
visible, but invisible too their thought. 

Now a happy image captivates. When the 
poet Nietzsche declared that the gods were dead 
in the firmament, the world was not particu- 
larly shocked, but much more interested when 
he forged his significant phrase, Will-to-Power. 
Henri Bergson is a man with exceptional liter- 
ary gifts. He has an ingratiating manner of say- 
ing things, of weaving them into golden loops of 
prose. As a lecturer he woos the ear with the 
rhythm of his musical cadences. How persua- 
sively, yet how calmly he juggles his orange- 
concepts, his Vital Impulse, his Intuition, his 
Instinct, his Life pictured as a swiftly flowing 
stream, his Time as a stuff both resistant and 
substantial, with his Creative Evolution. But, 
368 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

who knows, perhaps the image that will make his 
philosophy unforgetable is his comparison of hu- 
man consciousness with the mechanism of the 
cinematograph. He contrives to make a definite 
and logical pattern out of his theoretic oranges 
and literally in the air. I recall a lecture of his 
at the College de France, though the meaning of 
his talk has quite escaped my memory because I 
was studying the personality of the man. 

The Chinese have a saying that an image- 
maker never worships idols. Bergson is a mighty 
maker of images, nevertheless his sincerity, his 
faith, is unquestionable. He is intensely in earn- 
est, one would say passionately, if it were not too 
strong a word for a thinker whose bearing and 
gestures betray perfect equipoise. He is bald, 
with a beaver-like brow, the brow of a builder 
born ; his nose is slightly predacious, his features 
cameo-like, his deep-set eyes are dark, the eyes 
of an oracle though there is nothing of the pon- 
tifical in his attitude toward his audience. A 
modest man, because he knows so much, Berg- 
son is more of the petit-mattre, the diplomat, even 
the academician, than the popular notion that all 
philosophers are bearded old men, their eyes 
purging amber and plum-tree gum. Alert, even 
vivacious, M. Bergson is yet self-composed, far 
from a dreamer, and while he shows his Oriental 
stemming, he is less Jewish-looking than Anatole 
France. (It is said that Celtic blood flows in his 
veins as well as Semitic.) There is an ecclesi- 
astical suggestion ; you look for the soutane. As 

369 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

he spoke in that legato fashion of his, so unUke 
the average French orator, I thought of him as a 
Jewish Renan, a master-sophist, more dogmatic 
than the author of the Vie de Jesus — himself a 
Hebraicised thinker — and one not averse from 
the "mania of certitude," which his master did 
so abhor. 

And as Bergson's closely linked argument 
flowed on the image of his rushing river of ap- 
perception arose in my mind. What a wealth 
of examples. And what a picture-maker. What 
magic there is in these phrases: "II s'en faut 
que toutes nos idees s'incorporent a la masse de 
nos etats de conscience. Beaucoup flottent a la 
surface, comme des feuilles mortes sur I'eau 
d'un etang." One is instantly conscious of that 
pool upon whose languid surface the dead leaves 
float and in a flash you feel that our half-ex- 
pressed or discarded states of consciousness are 
as "dead leaves" that idly drift in the back- 
waters of our being. Throughout his various 
books such imagery is not infrequent. What if 
his elan vital be but another "vital lie," of the 
kind Ibsen believed so necessary to our happi- 
ness, that "lie" which the brilliant and origi- 
nal thinker Jules de Gualtier has erected into a 
philosophical system he calls "Le Bovaryisme" 
— the tendency of humanity to appear other 
than it is. People like to be told they are 
"free"; that life is a spontaneous outburst of 
optimism; that the intellect is not the chief of 
the human organism, the brain only being the 

370 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

telephonic "central"; that Intuition is superior 
to cerebration, and all the rest of the gorgeous 
bric-a-brac of this Parisian jeweller in philo- 
sophic phrases. But he has only set up one more 
conceptual idol in the metaphysical pantheon 
— the idol of Time, so long neglected for its 
fellow-fetish, Space. Time is an Absolute for 
Bergson, who otherwise detests the Absolute, 
even insinuating that Nature abhors an Abso- 
lute. Time is the idee mere of his work. It is 
also his one noteworthy contribution to contem- 
porary thought. It's magnificent, but it's meta- 
physics. And it always will be metaphysics — 
which if expelled from the door comes down the 
chimney. Paul Bourget says somewhere: "On 
revient toujours de ses voyages d'oubli," and it 
is difficult to escape the witchery of Bergson's 
adventures in the caves of the thought-idols. 
We are reminded of those old fantoccini hoary 
with age — Time and Space and Causality, or 
the Ego and the Non-Ego, all capitaHsed and all 
recalling the thrill metaphysical of our youth. 
As William James writes: "conjunctions, prep- 
ositions, and adverbs play indeed a vital part in 
all philosophies; and in contemporary ideaHsm 
the words 'as ' and ' qua ' bear the burden of rec- 
onciling metaphysical unity with phenomenal 
diversity." Bergson plays with his dialectic as 
does the Playboy of the Western World with his 
competitors. Not precisely a "vicious" circle of 
reasoning is his; rather let us say, in medical par- 
lance, a "benign" circle; which simply means 

371 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

that the elan vital is life because it's lively. All 
metaphysicians are mythomaniacs, though their 
myths are as a rule more verbalistic than concep- 
tual. However, Bergson is not altogether the 
victim of his own verbal virtuosity; the faulty 
method of appraising him is to blame. He has 
been adjudged an absolutely original thinker. 
He is not; indeed, the poet and myth-maker that 
is in him runs a close second with his metaphysic. 
All said and done, he is as much of an idealist as 
the next one, and to alter good old Sir Thomas 
Browne, he sees men not as trees, walking, but 
as images, flowing; and he also declares that 
"the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of 
a cinematographical kind." Truly, a "mechan- 
istic" image! 

For the rest, Henri Bergson is a hard-working 
professor, born at Paris, October 1 8, 1859. He 
entered the Ecole Normale in 1878, took his 
degree 1881, and was made doctor in letters 1889. 
Since 1900 he has been professor at the College 
de France, and in 1901 became a member of the 
Institute on his election to the Academic des 
Sciences morales et politiques. His Essai sur 
les donnees immediates de la conscience (Paris, 
1889), translated into English as Time and Free 
Will, is in our opinion the most valuable of his 
works, containing, as it does, the matrix of his 
ideas on Time and written in a more austere 
style than his better-known works. Matter and 
Memory followed (in 1896), with, in 1907, the 
favourite L'Evolution Creatrice (Creative Evolu- 

372 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

tion). The success of his writings has been 
universal, and in the English-speaking world 
largely due to the praise of the late William 
James — to my way of thinking a profounder 
philosopher than Bergson, and the possessor of 
a simpler and more searching rhetoric. 

Mankind longs for a definite "yes" or "no" 
in answer to the eternal enigmas, and Berg- 
son is a yes-sayer. He tells us in his supple 
prose that we need not be determinists or be- 
lievers in the automaton theory, that life is con- 
tinually creative, that we are in our individual 
way gods fashioning our own destinies, and 
much more that suspiciously sounds like old- 
fashioned teleological arguments. And in our 
century, "famous for its incoherences," this 
" spiritualisme en spirale" of Bergson, as Remy 
de Gourmont wittily puts it, has attracted the 
amateur philosopher as well as the idle of in- 
tellect, cultured women, the crowd without 
spiritual ballast, the whole flock of mystic, emo- 
tional, artistic, and semi-religious folk that 
are seeking for the unique sign, the objective 
frame, the message from Beyond. Bergson is 
their pet planet for the moment that Zarathustra 
speaks of: "Between two seas, between what is 
past and what is to come." Mysticism, with a 
nuance of sentimentality, has poked its nose once 
more into the crib of philosophy, demanding its 
share of flattery and sustenance. 



373 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 



II 

Imperial-minded Goethe reserved for philoso- 
phy but a small province in his vast intellectual 
kingdom. He loathed " thinking about thought," 
and made Mephisto tell the scholar: "Grau, 
teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie," though he did 
not fail to study Spinoza his life long. Yet his 
spinning spirit sings to Faust: "So schafif ich am 
sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit und wirke der 
Gottheit lebendiges Kleid . " That living garment 
of the deity is composed of Time and Space — 
and as many categorical imperatives as the in- 
genuity of philosophers can invent. Those are 
the convenient — and fictive — forms by which 
we apprehend the sensuous universe. Bergson 
lays the stress on Time as the more important 
factor in the understanding of life. Too long has 
the world been regarded through spatial spec- 
tacles; science recognises Space more than Time. 
But Time is not abstract, declares Bergson, it is 
concrete, real. He says: "My mental state as 
it advances on the road of time, is continually 
swelling with the duration which it accumulates: 
it goes on increasing — rolling upon itself, as a 
snowball on the snow. It is a mistake to tie to- 
gether our conscious states as manifestations of 
some ego. Time is all that connects them; in- 
deed, they are time. As regards the psychical 
life unfolding beneath the symbols which con- 
ceal it, we may readily perceive that time is just 

374 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

the stuff it is made of. . . . There is, moreover, 
no stuff more resistant nor more substantial." 

No denial here of objective reality; all is 
solidly concrete in a concrete world, far different 
from the "timeless block universe" of the abso- 
lutists. Time is a living thing. The original im- 
petus of life is the fundamental cause of varia- 
tions. This impetus is conscious. Its vital 
matter is the impediment, and its collision with 
the living stream, the resistance overcome, 
causes creation. Wherever this flows it organises 
matter. The greater the resistance, the more 
complex the resulting organism. Evolution is 
continually creative. It is now and everywhere. 
"Life seems to have succeeded in this by dint of 
humility, by making itself very small and very 
insinuating, bending to physical and chemical 
forces, consenting even to go part of the way with 
them." Life at the outset — but was there ever 
a beginning, M. Bergson, you who so dislike the 
idea of finalism? — was "possessed of the tre- 
mendous internal push that was destined to raise 
them — specks of protoplasm — even to the 
highest forms of life." The opponents of our 
philosopher contend that while his erudition is 
undeniable his inferences from facts observed 
are faulty; that his employment of analogies is 
specious — what have a snowball and Time in 
common? Snow accumulates while rolling, but 
does Time? Furthermore, he too often sets up a 
metaphysical man of straw so as to overturn it 
and triumphantly conclude that because he up- 

375 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

sets one theory his own is necessarily truthful. 
Which statement cannot be contravened. Berg- 
son has mastered much science and presses it 
into the service of his theories. But he has not 
proved his case any more than, say, Biichner 
with his Kraft und Stofif. What is really the 
difference between Bergson and Biichner? The 
latter is the apostle of Matter and Force, More 
metaphysics, as metaphysical as the Becoming 
(which suggests Renan's Fieri) of Bergson. All 
such phrases are symbols of Id has that we shall 
never know — from the lips of philosophers. 

In Matter and Memory he writes: "Truth 
no longer represents our past to us, it acts it." 
(Italics are his.) "Itself an image, the body can- 
not store up images; and this is why it is a 
chimerical enterprise to seek to localise past or 
even present perceptions in the brain; they are 
not in it; it is the brain that is in them. . . . 
My past gnaws into the present." Isn't this 
mediaeval scholasticism redivivus! All considera- 
tion of Free- Will must be considered in Time 
not Space. " Can time," he asks, "be adequately 
represented by space? To which we answer, 
Yes, if you are dealing with time flown; No, if 
you speak of time flowing ... all the difficul- 
ties of the problem and the problem itself arise 
from the desire to endow duration with the same 
attributes as extensity, to interpret a succession 
by a simultaneity, and to express the idea of free- 
dom in a language into which it is obviously un- 
translatable." We prefer to make these quota- 

376 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

tions rather than risk blurring the brilliancy and 
originality of the original thought by trans- 
position. Bergson is obsessed by the idea of a 
temporal, not a spatial, universe. Old Father 
Time is in the saddle again after being so long 
deposed by the Critique of Kant. The image of 
a focal point, our normal consciousness, imper- 
ceptible, shading into a fringe at the periphery 
is arresting, for it is that "fringe" from which 
we draw, as from a reservoir — never mind 
the mixed metaphor — our vision of life. Con- 
sciousness, he asserts, is almost independent of 
cerebral structure. He has been challenged to 
offer proofs of this existence apart from cere- 
bral structure. His Time is a clock-face that is 
always pointing to the high noon of eternity. 
Real Bergsonism is cosmic rhythm. He has in 
this respect the innocence of the ear, yet he knows 
that no two clocks ever strike simultaneously. 
The new mysticism is here. The subconscious as 
a reservoir for the eternal certitudes is not miss- 
ing, but the old verbal counters are used in the 
interest of a new obscurantism. He seriously 
subordinates the intellect to a minor role in his 
doctrine of Instinct; the intellectual operations 
are of less value than Intuition or Sympathy; ( 
yet he rather illogically objects to the agnosti- 
cism of Huxley — that humble student of truth 
revealed by science. The "new" theory of Free- 
Will — which Bergson handles rather gingerly — 
as a concomitant of his Vital Impulse, is, frankly 
speaking, a more terrifying metaphysical mon- 

377 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

ster than the old-fashioned and elaborately em- 
bellished Determinism. We wonder what Hart- 
mann would say to the subtle recreation of his 
Unconscious in the "Fringe" theory of Bergson! 
Or, Professor Miinsterberg! Curiously enough, 
with all his assumption of libertarianism, Berg- 
son's human is much more of an automaton than 
the man of the Cartesian formula. 

He doesn't subscribe to Rene Quinton's in- 
genious contention that birds followed verte- 
brates in the procession of evolutionary existence 
on our globe; nevertheless he declares the in- 
stinct of bees and ants as actually superior to 
human intelligence when interpreting the mean- 
ing of "life" to human intelligence. With all his 
depreciation of the intellect and his charming 
plaidoyer for the intuitive process — whatever 
that precisely means! — Bergson is the most 
signal example of rampant " intellectualism " — 
mollified by romantic rhetoric — that has put 
pen to paper during the past quarter of a century. 
But the seeming pellucidity of Bergson's style is 
often dangerously misleading; his ideas are not 
always pellucid; indeed, there are phantasms 
in this much-vaunted style with its shining 
photosphere, and its formidable shadows, in 
which lurk all sorts of metaphysical hobgoblins; 
the Boyg of Ibsen is there, the old Nominalism 
and the "Buffoon of the new Eternities," and a 
little rose-water — the Bergson metaphysic is 
not lacking in perfume; that is why his philos- 
ophy is allied to feminism, with its sympathetic 

378 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

divinations and intuitive reactions. Sensual 
mathematics all this, and an Icarus-like attempt 
to fly into the Fourth Dimension of Space. An 
excursion to Laputa, there to interview with its 
philosophers or the Struldbrugs of Swift, might 
produce more topsy-turvy ideation than Berg- 
sonism, but why should we go further? 

"We are rarely free," yet if free-will endures 
but an instant we are always free. Renan advises 
us to act as if we were really possessed of free- 
will. " Duration as Duration, Motion as Motion, 
elude the grasp of mathematics ... of Time 
everything slips through its fingers but si- 
multaneity, and of movement everything but 
immobility." (Time and Free-Will.) But 
Bergson could also write: "In the Absolute we 
live and move and have our being." (Creative 
Evolution, p. 199.) "In reality, life is a move- 
ment, materiahty is the inverse movement, and 
each of these two movements is simple, the mat- 
ter which forms a world being an undivided flux, 
and undivided also the life that runs through it, 
cutting in it living beings all along the track." 
The image of a prow sharply cutting the stream 
of consciousness— the waters of life — and creat- 
ing as it swims, is poetical and apposite. It may 
survive the Bergsonism of Bergson; but not so 
novel an idea as one finely expressed. Didn't 
the late Harald Hoffding say that we Hve for- 
ward, we understand backward? From Heracli- 
tus to Newman the student encounters variations 
of this imagery on the theme of the identity of 

379 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

the living universe. "He who tastes a crust of 
bread has tasted of the universe, even to the 
furthest star," wrote Paracelsus. And Leopard! 
said: "All the ages have been and will be more 
or less periods of transition; since human society 
never stands still, nor will there ever be an age 
in which it will be stationary." Some one has 
averred that Bergson reasons about Free-Will as 
the astronomers before Copernicus reasoned on 
the movements of the sky. His Intuition is not 
as convincing as the Illative Sense of John Henry 
Newman. In the Grammar of Assent Cardinal 
Newman wrote: "His progress — man's — is a 
living growth, not a mechanism; and its instru- 
ments are mental acts, not the formulas and 
contrivances of language." But didn't Pascal 
exclaim: "The heart hath its reasons," and the 
heart — or Sympathy, Intuition — may decide 
when the intellect can go no further. Ludwig 
Feuerbach, who occupied the philosophic affec- 
tions of Richard Wagner, before he lost them to 
Schopenhauer, once wrote: "God was my first 
idea. Reason my second, and Man my third and 
last thought. Man is alone and must be our 
God. No salvation outside of Man." (Over- 
capitalisation of words is another vice of philoso- 
phers, which Professor James did not include in 
his list of their defects.) Bergson seemingly 
would restore Man to his former anthropocentric 
position in the scheme of things — though shorn 
of his intellectual primacy. Yet he insists that 
he is not an idealist. While not being the pro- 
380 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

nounced Pluralist that was William James, he 
thinks that the conceptual vision of the Absolute 
is lacking in the largeness of rhythm, or rhythmic 
periods, which characterise Pluralism. The con- 
sciousness of our present is overflowed by the 
memory of our past. There is no Now in the old 
sense of the word. This fluidity of a real Time — 
not a metaphysical abstract — is the best thing 
in the Bergson philosophy. It is a vital idea. 
And what a fairy-land is metaphysics, a million 
times more romantic and thrilling than any fic- 
tion; indeed, the most entrancing fiction in liter- 
ature, both ancient and modern, is philosophy. 
Fancy such an astounding assertion as that "in- 
stinct brings us into closest tie with the universe." 
Bees and ants ought then to be the masters of 
mankind. Even the meticulous guinea-pig has as 
good a chance to win in the evolutionary race as 
the Eleatic tortoise had over Achilles. Perhaps 
the time will come when metaphysics will occupy 
the same relative position to real thought that 
astrology does to astronomy to-day. But Pas- 
cal's Abysm — the unknowable ■ — will always 
be at the side of mankind to disquiet or strike 
terror to his heart. Hence the world will ever 
listen to the voice of the philosopher who cries 
aloud in the darkness: *'Lo! I, alone, am the 
bearer of light." 



381 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 



III 

Some objections: William James writes in his 
A Pluralistic Universe: " Intellectualism has its 
source in the faculty which gives us our chief 
superiority to the brutes, namely, of translating 
the crude flux of merely feeling-experience into a 
conceptual order." He admits that, "We of 
course need a stable scheme of concepts, stably 
related to one another, to lay hold of our experi- 
ences and to co-ordinate them withal." In his 
The Thing and Its Relations (the volume above 
quoted, p. 351), writing of the intellect, he goes 
further: "It originated as a practical means of 
serving life; but it has developed incidentally 
the function of understanding absolute truth; 
and life itself now seems to be given chiefly as a 
means by which that function may be prosecuted. 
But truth and the understanding of it lie among 
the abstracts and universals, so the intellect now 
carries on its higher business wholly in this 
region without any need of redescending into 
pure experience again." (1905.) Where does 
Bergsonism come in here? "Absolute truth!" 
James has confessed that the Bergson philosophy 
was not all as a lantern shining on a dark path- 
way; perhaps he scented its latent "spiritual- 
ism." But what does all this verbal hair-split- 
ting mean to us in actual life? What an Ixion 
wheel! Monism or Pluralism? Idealism or 
Realism? Under which king? A comma instead 
382 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

of semicolon may wreck a philosophic system. 
There are those who believe that the misreading 
of a certain holy book gave birth to a mighty re- 
ligion. The very structure of our cerebral organ 
forces us to think by associating disjointed ideas. 
Nevertheless the mechanistic theory has the 
authority of experience, and even if James does 
define Empiricism as meaning "the habit of ex- 
plaining wholes by parts, and rationahsm means 
the habit of explaining the parts by wholes" 
(and strictly speaking, neither one nor the other 
explains), we must pin our faith not to meta- 
physics, but to the more tangible results of sci- 
ence, which moves slowly but surely. Modern 
philosophy has always followed science like a 
crow the furrow of a well-sown field, picking here 
and there a seed. Bergson makes a great show 
of reverently beheving the tenets of science but, 
at the first opportunity, flies off on a fiery-winged 
tangent to the land of metaphysical Nowhere. 
He has imagination, though not much humour; 
in the ironical presentation of the adversary's 
case he lags far behind William James, His sys- 
tem — though he disclaims having any — is im- 
pressionistic, it also straddles between the real 
and the ideal, and flirts with both the mechanistic 
and the metaphysical. In his Huxley lecture at 
the University of Birmingham (191 1) he con- 
cluded that "in man, though in man alone, con- 
sciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly 
life." Shades of Thomas Huxley! 

We find some of the ideas of Professor Berg- 

383 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

son in the works of Emile Boutroux ("De la con- 
tingence des lois de la nature," 1874), and also 
of Renouvier. The germs of his leading ideas 
may be discovered in Nietzsche — that sworn foe 
of metaphysics. When he has given us his pro- 
jected Ethic we shall see then what bearing his 
philosophy has upon the nature of judgments, 
as a pragmatic reason about the chief use for the 
art of philosophising. His ^Esthetic, too, will 
surely prove of interest judging from his essay 
on Laughter (Le Rire, 19 10). In it are swift 
if not satisfactory generaHsations, and a plenti- 
ful lack of humour, together with much pol- 
ished writing. I prefer George Meredith's less 
metaphysical but more illuminative essay on 
Comedy. 

Bergsonism is riddled with paradox, yet it is 
stimulating as just another multicoloured picture 
of the universe by a man in whom the philo- 
sophical play-instinct (in Schiller's sense) is ele- 
vated to a fine art. For him the vast hinterland 
of metaphysics, the ''unknowable" of philosophy, 
the Fourth Dimension of Space, is a happy hunt- 
ing-ground where with his highly burnished meta- 
physical weapons he pops away at Time and 
Space and other strange fauna of that misty and 
tremendous region. He exhibits the daring of 
the hardy adventurer and he occasionally returns 
with a trophy worth while — but always heavily 
laden with the flora. All the rest is metaphysics. 
As his philosophy is mainly an affair of images — 
deHcateiy fashioned mosaics, fairy-like structures 

384 



PLAYBOY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY 

and dazzling mental mirages — its study natu- 
rally begets images. That is why I call the image- 
maker, Henri Bergson, the Playboy of Western 
Philosophy. 



385 



XV 

A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS* 

Writing a preface to a book several years old 
is not necessarily either a matter of prudence 
or a kind of belated precipitation; it may well 
be only that fatal itch of the author who is not 
satisfied to leave sleeping hornets unawakened. 
Possibly because I was rudely twitted on the ap- 
pearance of Egoists for its lack of general ideas — 
as I surely shall be about the present volume — I 
gently hasten to print an apology for the omis- 
sion of something I do not believe in, the fa- 
mous "general ideas"; also missing in my Icono- 
clasts as I was reminded by a French critic, M. 
Loyson. That book contained no preface which 
might have helped the reader across arid and 
thorny definitions; no friendly footnotes; not 
even a postlude instead of a preface, in which 
would be found a neat little theory of a school 
or a "stream of tendencies"; no special applica- 
tion of the art of plumbing to doctrines held by 
various dramatists. I confess I am still a sceptic 
as to the value of "general ideas," believing more 
in their dissociation, as practised by Remy de 
Gourmont. A "general idea," for example, is 
the so-called period of transition used with such 
'Egoists; published 1909, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons. 
386 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

effect by writers of aesthetic history. Liszt was 
a ''Transitional" composer, according to Bay- 
reuth; a musical John the Baptist sent to pre- 
pare the way for the musical Messiah, Richard 
Wagner. So, too, Berlioz. That these men, 
the Frenchman and the Hungarian, were each a 
unicum, a perfectly distinct personality, and the 
inventor of something never before heard, is but 
the truth. Manet, Richard Strauss, Ibsen, have 
already been placed in the "Transitional" class 
by writers over-eager for to-morrow's crop of 
painters, composers, and dramatists. How can 
we say that our period is "Transitional" till it 
has vanished in the vortex of the past? But M. 
Bergson says all "Time" is transitional! How 
do these pundits catch their perspective before 
they have finished their foreground? 

And now what is to be conjured up from the 
dreams of all the jostling personalities in Egoists 
— the original title of which was The Ivory 
Tower — those madmen, wits, saints, and sin- 
ners? I could have decked out its pages with an 
ingenious introduction which would set forth the 
facts that Stendhal was the first "modern" phil- 
osophic Egoist — he, the most unphilosophic of 
men; that Baudelaire was the Dante of the 
decadence, a topsy-turvy Catullus to whom the 
"joy of life" was denied; that Flaubert was 
a lyric prophet, a philosopher and realistic 
historian; that Anatole France is a miraculous 
and tantalising sceptic, who, au fond, despises 
humanity more than any of his cenobites, and 

387 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

never ceases to depreciate moral values, though 
with the triumphant air of a physician who has 
discovered an interesting malady. Into what 
cadre must Anatole France be fitted! He is 
pagan. He is Hebraic. And he adores the Fa- 
thers of the Church. Is he not a latter-day ex- 
pression of the Eternal Mocker, a French Heine 
sans the lyric genius of the Jewish Aristophanes? 
If he is not, does it much matter? Rather let 
the question be settled by the reader, in whose 
intelligence I have firm faith. Remember that 
I have not suggested this inutile scheme of clas- 
sification; but there are those who demand it, 
and in the domain of music they, lacking all 
fancy, will tell you that it is immoral to put the 
thumb on the black keys of a pianoforte when 
playing a prelude of Bach. 

Now, there is Huysmans, what more need be 
said of this extraordinary soul? One morning he 
awoke and thirsted for God; gods in some shape 
or other have been always a necessity for man- 
kind; though there were atheists before the in- 
vention of mirrors. (It is impossible for a man 
not to beheve in a god when he shaves himself. 
Tender masculine egoists!) Barres shows us 
the importance of being Maurice; a.fauteuil in 
the Academy would still be for him a delectable 
dream if he had not kept this notion well in view. 
O the starry music of self-esteem ! Of the mystics 
what may not be written? "Soft and terrible, 
foul and fair," as Yeats has it. To me they seem 
the sanest folk in a world full of futile sounds and 
388 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

gestures. They write with more precision than 
rationalistic thinkers, because they have the 
vision. And most mystics are anarchs. Ibsen 
is a thrice- told critical tale; like the earlier Wag- 
ner works his first plays are in the mists. To- 
day, Nora Helmer would not slam that front 
door; her husband would probably be the one to 
leave, though not for ever — like HJalmar Ekdal 
— for a drink or two while away from the doll's 
house. Women have changed since the days of 
Nora; they were always realists, to-day they are 
pragmatists, and, as Jules Laforgue declared, 
"Stability, thy name is Woman." That is at 
once her charm and her fate. 

Max Stirner is the enfant terrible of the Lu- 
theran doctrine of private judgment. Of him I 
said that ours is the best of possible worlds — if 
we don't abide in it too long. It is the menace 
of eternity, whether it is to be spent aloft or in 
the nethermost region, that is so disconcerting to 
those who beat against the bars of their prison, 
the appalling prison of Self. Ernest Renan, oily, 
sacerdotal, most fascinating of sophists, had an 
equal horror of paradise, a place of perpetual 
ennui, as he had of hades, so he diplomatically 
preferred purgatory. But isn't there an ancient 
adage to the effect that in hell it is considered 
bad form to speak of the heat! I know of noth- 
ing more sinister than Nietzsche's doctrine of 
the Eternal Recurrence. To be born ever anew 
makes Nirvana as welcome as ice to lips parched 
by the fires of Tophet. Nietzsche, too, how 

389 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

many pages might be devoted to him and his 
rainbow thoughts. What is one man's gehenna 
may be the heaven of another. Like Pascal, 
like Flaubert, like Huysmans, Nietzsche elected 
the dark and narrow path of pain. Set this down 
to a neurosis — do not forget he was the first to 
diagnose his trouble as spiritual decadence — or 
to any modish psychical fads you will, the fact 
remains that he saw certain ''terrible" truths 
that would not have been realised if his brain had 
remained normal. The world is the gainer there- 
by. Fancy a man mortally wounded registering 
with rectitude his symptoms. This Nietzsche 
did. Very often sick souls discover robust 
truths. Healthy-minded men are seldom path- 
finders of the spirit. Nietzsche's sickness was of 
the soul, and while George Moore has said that 
"self-esteem is synonymous with genius," the 
pride of Nietzsche became a monstrous atrophy 
of the Ego. Yet we must perforce admire the 
bravery of this giant scholar who burned his 
books behind him, thus believing to "free" him- 
self. He was a neo-pagan who defiantly cried: 
I have conquered, Galilean ! And in an age that 
is almost pyrrhonistic Nietzsche at least believed 
in something, believed that Christianity was on 
trial and found wanting; whereas his contempo- 
raries in the world of intellect, for the most part, 
didn't care who ruled, Jove or Jesus, Jehovah or 
Buddha. The pathetic side of the Nietzsche case 
is his naive belief in the power of the written 
word. He thought that his verbal dynamite had 

390 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

mined Christianity. Perhaps his time-fuse has 
been set ahead one or more centuries. Neverthe- 
less, his is a grandiose vision of humanity. His 
Superman, the penultimate evolution of a gorilla 
into a god, is a plastic clay figure in the hands of 
this dream-potter; a promise, a Beyond. Who 
knows, whether long after the last performance of 
Wagner's Ring and its socialistic sonorities, the 
august name of Friedrich Nietzsche will not be 
sounded through golden horns from the belfries 
of the world? This is not a hazard at prediction, 
only a chess-play of inference. 

Said the wise Goethe — the wisest man since 
Montaigne — "In der Beschrankung zeigt sich 
erst der Meister." All these heroes have their 
limitations; though they may not be Supermen 
they have attacked the slopes of Parnassus, 
far above the goose-land of altruism; that 
land now filled with the discordant sounds of 
equaUty quackery. Philosophic Egoism is at 
least free from the depressing sentimentahty of 
"going to the people." Brotherhood of Man! 
Brotherhood of fudge and hypocrisy! No one 
sincerely beUeves in it; it's a catch- word for 
gulls and politicians. How much is in it for 
us? sums up the programme of the professional 
altruists. Rousseau, not Nietzsche, is the real 
Antichrist, for he invented that lying legend: 
Liberty, Equahty, Fraternity — that seductive 
three-voiced Cerberus-like fugue, which has led 
milUons sheep-wise over the precipice of false 
hopes. 

391 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

But the accusation that Egoists, like Icono- 
clasts, lacked "general ideas" did not seem as 
curious to me as the insinuation made by certain 
reviewers that the writers treated in Egoists 
were more or less negligible. I was gently re- 
minded that Victor Hugo, Lamartine, De Musset, 
Balzac, and several others were of more impor- 
tance than my selected heroes of the ink-pot. 
Who said they weren't? Only they are not of 
the same importance to-day as they were over 
a half century ago. The "main-currents" of 
French literature, i. e., Continental literature, 
were traversed and dominated during the past 
fifty years by Stendhal — to whom Tolstoy ad- 
mits his indebtedness — by Flaubert, by Baude- 
laire (in poetry and criticism particularly), by 
Nietzsche, by Max Stirner (who played a role 
in the intellectual development of Nietzsche), 
and in a minor degree by Barres, Huysmans, and 
Anatole France. To Stendhal the world owes 
the analytical novel — he wasn't its creator but 
he gave the genre its definite mould — and from 
Flaubert stern naturalists, symbolists; even a 
new school of philosophy, Le Bovaryisme of Jules 
Gualtier. And Baudelaire was the most original 
poet of his day. He brought into the domain of 
poesy new subject-matter, a wellnigh incredible 
achievement. These men quite filled the liter- 
ary firmament of Europe and to patronise them 
as do some critics for not being giants of the stat- 
ure of Hugo or Balzac or Chateaubriand is to 
ring a new change on the pathetic fallacy. The 

392 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

fact remains that they were the chief forces of 
their period; European literature still feels the 
impact of their personalities. They made his- 
tory and any one who can run and is not bhnd 
may read this history. No doubt when the cor- 
ridor of time lengthens between them and newer 
generations the pathos of distance will again 
operate and fresh critical perspective form. 

Let me confess that the thinkers united under 
the title of "Egoists" are a fortuitous grouping. 
No particular theory of life is adduced there- 
from; if you believe in the salve of "altruism," 
then, as William James would say, it is your 
truth; or, if you follow Walter Pater's poetic 
injunction, and burn always with a clear, hard 
flame of some artistic enthusiasm, go ahead and 
burn, but watch yourself — that way neurasthenia 
lies. Nearly all the men in the book lived their 
lives "to the fullest"; and were generally un- 
happy. Those who returned to beHef in reUgion 
seemed happy. At this juncture I sha'n't ex- 
claim: Ergo! However, it is a holy and whole- 
some act to retire to the "seven solitudes" of 
your ivory tower and there come face to face 
with the one reality in this world of fluctuating 
images — your own soul (your "subliminal self," 
is the precise psychic slang-phrase). 

John Henry Newman, in his Apologia, spoke 
of "the thought of two and two only absolute 
and luminously self-evident beings, myself and 
my Creator." That is a crystallisation of the 
Higher Egoism. For dolorous souls, disenchanted 

393 



A BELATED PREFACE TO EGOISTS 

by the deceptions of life, these words of Car- 
dinal Newman light the strait and difficult 
pathway to the veritable Turris Ehurnea. But 
for those to whom the world is a place to 
collect bric-a-brac, stale "truths," reputations 
for respectability, other people's money, and 
earth-worms, the aphorism of Nietzsche must 
suffice as an epitaph: "Some souls will never be 
discovered unless they be first invented." 



394 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 



FRANZ LISZT 

S2.00 net 

" There can be little doubt that the most entertaining 
form of biography for such a man as was Franz should 
be on the lines of Mr. James Huneker's volume." 

— London Pall Mall Gazette (Jan. 16, 1912). 

" Mr. Huneker is almost the ideal biographer of 
Liszt. His piquant and lively style, his patience and 
thoroughness, his unfailing zest, are all qualities de- 
manded by his subject. ... It is Mr. Huneker's dis- 
tinction to have brought out without effort the double 
nature of Liszt's personality." 

— Manchester Courier (Feb. 7, 1912). 

" Liszt and James Huneker together form a tasty 
and intriguing combination — devilled kidneys and 
mushrooms, let us say, or grilled sole and chablis, but 
certainly not strawberries and cream. . . . For James 
has a tongue with a tang . . . his book will be read 
when all the Liszt centenary literature has returned to 
the comparative innocence of pulp." 

— London Daily Chronicle (March 6, 1912). 

" Mr. Huneker does not place Liszt on a pedestal. 
He puts him among his fellow men and judges him 
accordingly. The verdict is not unfair, though it is not 
invariably flattering." 

— London Morning Post (April 18, 1912). 

"This — Liszt: the real and legendary — is a really 
brilliant sketch in Mr. Huneker's best manner, and that 
is saying much. In his breathless coruscating manner 
he paints a wonderfully vivid picture of Liszt the man 
and musician. . . . His audacities are often calculated 
to shock the orthodox. . . . But he is always brilliant 
and arresting . . . there is plenty in the author's vig- 
orous and racy pages to commend itself to all — notably 
his eloquent tribute to the greatness of Liszt's per- 
sonality." 

— London Westminster Gazette (June i, 1912). 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 



PROMENADES 

of an 

IMPRESSIONIST 

$1.50 net 

Contents : Paul Cezanne — Rops the Etcher — Monticelli — Rodin 
— Eugene Carrifere — Degas — Botticelli — Six Spaniards — Char- 
din — Black and White — Impressionism — A New Study of Wat- 
teau — Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec — Literature and Art — 
Museum Promenades. 

" The vivacity of Mr. Huneker's style sometimes tends to conceal 
the judiciousness of his matter. His justly great reputation as a 
journalist critic most people would attribute to his salient phrase. 
To the present writer, the phrase goes for what it is worth — gener- 
ally it is eloquent and interpretative, again merely decorative — what 
really counts is an experienced and unbiassed mind at ease with its 
material. The criticism that can pass from Goya, the tempestuous, 
that endless fount of facile enthusiasms, and do justice to the serene 
talent of Fortuny is certainly catholic. In fact, Mr. Huneker is an 
impressionist only in his aversion to the literary approach, and in a 
somewhat wilful lack of system. This, too, often seems less temper- 
amental than a result of journalistic conditions, and of the dire need 
of being entertaining. 

" We like best such sober essays as those which analyze for us the 
technical contributions of Cezanne and Rodin. Here, Mr. Huneker 
is a real interpreter, and here his long experience of 'men and ways 
in art counts for much. Charming, in the slighter vein, are such ap- 
preciations as the Monticelli, and Chardin. Seasoned readers of 
Mr. Huneker's earlier essays in musical and dramatic criticism will 
naturally turn to the fantastic titles in this book. Such border-line 
geniuses as Greco, Rops, Meryon, Gustave Moreau, John Martin, arc 
treated with especial gusto. We should like to have an appreciation 
of Blake from this ardent searcher of fine eccentricities. In the main 
the book is devoted to artists who have come into prominence since 
1870, the French naturally predominating, but such precursors of 
modem tendencies or influential spirits as Botticelli, Watteau, 
Piranesi are included. Eleven ' Museum promenades,' chiefly in 
the Low Countries and in Spain, are on the whole less interesting 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 



than the individual appreciations — necessarily so, but this category 
embraces a capital sketch of Franz Hals at Haarlem, while the three 
Spanish studies on the Prado Museum, Velasquez, and Greco at 
Toledo, are quite of the best. From the Velasquez, we transcribe 
one of many fine passages: 

" ' His art is not correlated to the other arts. One does not 
dream of music or poetry or sculpture or drama in front of 
his pictures. One thinks of life and then of the beauty of 
the paint. Velasquez is never rhetorical, nor does he paint 
for the sake of making beautiful surfaces as often does 
Titian. His practice is not art for art as much as art for 
life. As a portraitist, Titian's is the only name to be coupled 
with that of Velasquez. He neither flattered his sitters, as 
did Van Dyck, nor mocked them like Goya. And consider 
the mediocrities, the dull, ugly, royal persons he was forced 
to painti He has wrung the neck of banal eloquence, and 
his prose, sober, rich, noble, sonorous, rhythmic, is, to my 
taste, preferable to the exalted, versatile volubility and lofty 
poetic tumblings in the azure of any school of painting.' 

Here we see how winning Mr. Huneker's manner is and how in- 
sidious. Unless you immediately react against that apparently 
innocent word ' tumblings,' your faith in the grand style will begin 
to disintegrate. It is this very sense of walking among pitfalls that 
will make the book fascinating to a veteran reader. The young are 
advised to temper it with an infusion of Sir Joshua Reynolds's ' Dis- 
course^' quantum sufjicit." — Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., in New 
York Nation and Evening Post, 



EGOISTS 

A BOOK OF SUPERMEN 

With Portrait and Facsimile Reprodtutions 

1 2mo. $ 1 .50 net ; Postpaid $ 1 .65 

Contents : Stendhal— Baudelaire — Flaubert — Anafole France — 
Huysmans — Barres — Hello — Blake — Nietzsche — Ibsen — Max 
Stimer. 

" The work of a man who knows his subject thoroughly and who 
writes frankly and unconventionally." — The Outlook. 

"Stimulating, provocative of thought" — The Forum. 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

ICONOCLASTS: 

A Book of Dramatists 

i2mo. $1.50 net 

Contents: Henrik Ibsen — August Strindberg — Henry Becque — 
Gerhart Hauptmann — Paul Hervieu — The Quintessence of 
Shaw — Maxim Gorky's Nachtasyl — Hermann Sudermann — 
Princess Mathilde's Play — Duse and D'Annunzio — Villiers de 
risle Adam — Maurice Maeterlinck. 

" His style is a little jerky, but it is one of those rare styles in which 
we are led to expect some significance, if not wit, in every sentence." 
— G. K. Chesterton, in London Daily News. 

"No other book in English has surveyed the whole field so com- 
prehensively." — The Outlook. 

"A capital book, lively, informing, suggestive." 

— London Times Saturday Review. 
"Eye-opening and mind-clarifying is Mr. Huneker's criticism ; 
no one having read that opening essay in this volume 
will lay it down until the final judgment upon Maurice Maeterlinck 
is reached." — Boston Transcript. 



OVERTONES: 

A Book of Temperaments 

W/7^ FRONTISPIECE PORTRAIT OF 
RICHARD STRAUSS 

i2ino. $1.50 net 

Contents: Richard Strauss — Parsifal: A Mystical Melodrama — 
Literary Men who loved Music (Balzac, Turgenieff, Daudet, 
etc.) — The Eternal Feminine — The Beethoven of French Prose 
—Nietzsche the Rhapsodist — Anarchs of Art — After Wagner, 
What?— Verdi and Boito. 

"The whole book is highly refreshing with its breadth of knowl- 
edge, its catholicity of taste, and its inexhaustible energy." 

— Saturday Review, London. 

"In some respects Mr. Huneker must be reckoned the most 
brilliant of all living writers on matters musical." — Academy, London. 

" No modem musical critic has shown greater ingenuity in the 
attempt to correlate the literary and musical tendencies of the nine- 
teenth century." — Spectator, London. 



BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER 

MEZZOTINTS IN 
MODERN MUSIC 

BRAHMS, TSCHAIKOWSKY, CHOPIN, 

RICHARD STRAUSS, LISZT 

AND WAGNER 

i2tno. $1.50 net 

"Mr. Huneker is, in the best sense, a critic; he listens to the 
music and gives you his impressions as rapidly and in as few words 
as possible ; or he sketches the composers in fine, broad, sweeping 
strokes with a magnificent disregard for unimportant details. And 
as Mr. Huneker is, as I have said, a powerful personality, a man of 
quick brain and an energetic imagination, a man of moods and tem- 
perament — a string that vibrates and sings in resfxjnse to music — 
we get in these essays of his a distinctly original and very valuable 
contribution to the world's tiny musical literature." 

— J. F. RuNcruAN, in London Saturday Review. 



MELOMANIACS 

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Contents: The Lord's Prayer in B — A Son of Liszt — A Chopin 
of the Gutter — The Piper of Dreams — An Emotional Acrobat 
— Isolde's Mother — The Rim of Finer Issues — -An Ibsen Girl — 
Tannhauser's Choice— The Red-Headed Piano Player — Bryn- 
hild's Immolation — The Quest of the Elusive — An Involuntary 
Insurgent — Hunding's Wife — -The Corridor of Time — Avatar 
^The Wegstaffes give a Musicale — The Iron \'irgin — Dusk 
of the Gods — Siegfried's Death — Intermezzo — A Spinner of 
Silence — The Disenchanted Symphony — Music the Conqueror. 

"It would be difficult to sum up ' Melomaniacs ' in a phrase. 
Never did a book, in my opinion at any rate, exhibit greater con- 
trasts, not, perhaps, of strength and weakness, but of clearness and 
obscurity. It is inexplicably uneven, as if the writer were perpetu- 
ally playing on the boundao' line that divides sanity of thought from 
intellectual chaos. There is method in the madness, but it is a 
method of intangible ideas. Nevertheless, there is genius written 
over a large portion of it, and to a musician the wealth of musical 
imagination is a living spring of thought." 

— Harold E. Gorst, in London Saturday Review (Dec. 8, 1906). 



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VISIONARIES 

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Contents: A Master of Cobwebs — The Eighth Deadly Sin — The 
Purse of Aholibah — Rebels of the Moon — The Spiral Road — 
A Mock Sun — Antichrist — The Eternal Duel — The Enchanted 
Yodler — The Third Kingdom — The Haunted Harpsichord— 
The Tragic Wall — A Sentimental Rebellion — Hall of the Miss- 
ing Footsteps — The Cursory Light — An Iron Fan — The Woman 
Who Loved Chopin — The Tune of Time — Nada — Pan. 

"The author's style is sometimes grotesque in its desire both to 
startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great 
noveUsts who write French a child may read and understand. He 
calls the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 
'truth beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur- 
colored cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young 
elephant.' But even these oddities are significant and to be placed 
high above the slipshod sequences of words that have done duty 
till they are as meaningless as the imprint on a worn-out coin. 

"Besides, in nearly every story the reader is arrested by the idea, 
and only a little troubled now and then by an over-elaborate style. 
If most of us are sane, the ideas cherished by these visionaries are 
insane; but the imagination of the author so illuminates them that 
we follow wondering and spellbound. In 'The Spiral Road' and 
in some of the other stories both fantasy and narrative may be com- 
pared with Hawthorne in his most unearthly moods. The younger 
man has read his Nietzsche and has cast ofif his heritage of simple 
morals. Hawthorne's Puritanism finds no echo in these modem 
souls, all sceptical, wavering and unblessed. But Hawthorne's 
splendor of vision and his power of sympathy with a tormented 
mind do live again in the best of Mr. Huneker's stories." 

— London Academy (Feb. 3, ipo6). 



CHOPIN: 

The Man and His Music 

ff/T/f ETCHED PORTRAIT 

i2mo. $2.00 net 

"No pianist, amateur or professional, can rise from the perusal of 
his pages without a deeper appreciation of the new forms of beauty 
which Chopin has added, like so many species of orchids, to the 
musical flora of the nineteenth century." — The Nation. 

"I think it not too much to predict that Mr. Huneker's estimate 
of Chopin and his works is destined to be the permanent one. He 
gives the reader the cream of the cream of all noteworthy previous 
commentators, besides much that is wholly his own. He speaks at 
once with modesty and authority, always with personal charm." 

— Boston Transcript. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



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